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bigjojo321 t1_jdaticy wrote

From the guy who claimed 50% of the country are active users, this means less than nothing.

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skilliard7 t1_jdehiax wrote

I don't know anyone my age that doesn't use Tiktok

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TheFabiocool t1_jdh1kph wrote

I don't know anyone my age (27) that does use TikTok, it's cringe, and a brain-drain.

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bubster15 t1_jdf2rq4 wrote

I’m the opposite. I’m 28 and know a lot of people including myself that suffered a mental health crisis from social media consumption and I don’t touch it with a 10 foot pole now. No regrets, holy hell did that shit consume me and others. I’m glad to be more rooted in the physical world now, it has brought me an immense amount more happiness.

I know very few people that talk about the app or care about it in a meaningful way, I cannot imagine people my age lashing out at a ban whatsoever. Adults have more important things going on and there are dozens of alternatives that aren’t owned by a country that views us as it’s mortal enemy and banned our social media without hesitation.

We are drastically overestimating the backlash to this decision to ban them, which is a prudent decision based on the CCPs own statements, countless vague threats and aggressive anti-democracy and U.S. rhetoric

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FeezusChrist t1_jdf4t45 wrote

“Adults have more important things going on and there are dozens of alternatives that aren't owned by a country that views us as it's mortal enemy and banned our social media without hesitation”

A reason TikTok is particularly popular is because it’s not controlled by our government or big tech that dominates U.S media. On TikTok you are exposed to news and content that the media simply does not cover. For example, how much U.S media coverage do you see of the France protests against raising the age of retirement? You see it a lot on TikTok, rarely covered otherwise by the media. I wonder if there’s a conflict of interest?

And saying adults have more important things to do is so pretentious, you’re on Reddit right now so you’re already invalidating your own implication of social media being some low form of entertainment.

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skilliard7 t1_jdf6vik wrote

> I’m 28 and know a lot of people including myself that suffered a mental health crisis from social media consumption and I don’t touch it with a 10 foot pole now.

You say this yet you're on a social media account that you seem to post very regularly to. I don't understand.

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bubster15 t1_jdf98il wrote

Yes true. I allow Reddit because I actually have a ton of friendly interactions on it and usually makes me laugh! Fair point though. I deleted twitter, Facebook and insta permanently and haven’t looked back, those are all huge wins for me and my mental health

Shows how easy it is to get sucked back in. I catch myself all the time sinking back to the habit.

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SomethingMatter t1_jddul3l wrote

Yeah, this claim is total bullshit. All of the kids in my daughters school are on tiktok but very few parents in the area use it. Even then, the numbers will always skew higher because babies and toddlers aren't going to be using this and there is no limit on the upper end. For example, if you have 5 x 13 year olds, a 15 year old, a 16 year old, a 22 year old and 2 x 46 year old people. That averages out to 21 years. The vast majority of people are school kids with only one college student, and 2 older people. He should be giving the median age and he knows it.

All of that is also ignoring that a lot of kids stick fake ages into these apps.

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Kleanish t1_jdedf8h wrote

With 150 million people it’s becomes very normalized and the average is closer to the median.

Can’t compare a sample of 10 to 150 million.

Yes the average and median are different but the median is still near whatever they said the average was.

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SomethingMatter t1_jdeinsm wrote

But those 150 million people would have a similar distribution. Lets say that the minimum age on TikTok is 12 and the highest age is 65. An average/mean age of 23 would have to include more people in the 12-23 block than the 23-65 block because the people in the upper end count "more". Populations that skew right (assuming age goes from a lower to a higher value) will always have a mean that is higher than the median (https://www.statology.org/left-skewed-vs-right-skewed/).

That is why the median is much more important because it tells us the skew of the data. The mean is bullshit in this case.

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Kleanish t1_jdeiuvs wrote

repeats first comment

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SomethingMatter t1_jdejiiu wrote

Like WTF? Do you even understand statistics? Do you understand skewed populations? 150 million people won't become a normalized population just because you think it should. For example, voters in the USA skew older. That's a fact. If you look at the number of people who vote and their age then it will not form a normalized population. It will skew left. It doesn't matter that there are 150 million people voting. That fact holds true.

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Kleanish t1_jdekbzc wrote

You’re right. My statement should read “more” normalized.

The difference in mean and average is not applicable to the discussion at hand. There is a difference, but, most likely, not enough to warrant a change in discussion. Aka the point still stands “users on TikTok are older than most think”

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SomethingMatter t1_jdelefh wrote

What does older in “users on TikTok are older than most think” mean? Older can refer to the majority (median) or average (mean). Most people think of it in terms of the first. TikTok used the mean for a reason, because it's lower than the median. If the data was skewed the other way around, they would have used the median. Hell, if the median user was past college age then they probably would have said that "there are more users past college age than younger".

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Kleanish t1_jdelobl wrote

It doesn’t matter though.

None of them; mode, median, or mean are close to the age of kids.

You are bringing up mute points

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SomethingMatter t1_jdemg85 wrote

> None of them; mode, median, or mean are close to the age of kids.

How can you know that? TikTok only gave the mean. They didn't give us the distribution or the median.

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Kleanish t1_jdes0jb wrote

I don't. Its very unlikely with the age they gave and the total population of users.

Like I said in the first comment, with a sample 10 or 20, its to be expected the median and average would vary a lot.

It is very unlikely, given the age they provided of the average, the median would stoop as low as a kid's age, under 13, or even under 16.

Here

Disclaimer: that is monthly active users. Though the second theory, while total number of users will be different than this graph, I imagine that the older the person is, the less likely they will continue using the app, or use it less often per month. As in monthly active users will skew lower in age than the total number of users.

So then maybe at one point in time, lets say hourly, the age of active users on TikTok may be very low.

​

See how nuanced we are getting?

Itll never be one data point. With how big TikTok is, single data points lose value.

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SomethingMatter t1_jdey99p wrote

I agree with this. We can see the skew from that graph but it depends what data points we look at. Daily users probably skew younger than monthly or total users. I also agree that I don't think the median would get as low as 16 years but even having half of your users under 18 isn't a good sign.

That's why I said the claim in the first place is bullshit. Obviously TikTok will pick the best data points to make their argument. They have all of the data and can cheery pick something to make their case.

Ironically, this is probably far less relevant than the algorithms that they use to push content to people. For example, anyone under 14 in China can't use TikTok for more than 40 minutes per day but that restriction doesn't exist here. And those users are also shown different content (educational) instead of the regular content. So the algorithm in China for youth is different from the algorithm for youth here.

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cptnamr7 t1_jdb8bx5 wrote

Bowling for Soup has a song out called "Getting Old Sucks (but everybody's doing it)" Where they're pretty much the old guy-get-off-my-lawn guys. At one point they're listing off their health conditions and end the verse with "what the fuck is tiktok?". That pretty much sums it up. Very few people over the age of I would guess 35 even know what it actually is other than the news constantly telling them it's making all the kids crazy

Edit: holy shit this angered some folks. I'm 40. I don't know a single person that uses it, though their kids do. That's the extent. I was agreeing with the original comment here that this dude seems to be full of shit if he's going to claim it's mostly used by young professionals.

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EqualityZucchini t1_jdbfm2x wrote

Bro I'm not angry but people over 40 know what TikTok is.

You remind me of those people in 2010 who claimed people over 30 couldn't use a smartphone. Or the same in 2000 for the Internet.

I'm.sure there are some slow learners out there but it's not like cloud computing or something. Most people know what TikTok is.

My mom is pushing 70. She knows what TikTok is.

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Kino_Loy t1_jdbd1aj wrote

this is an out of touch shit take - the planet knows tiktok by now

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Keepitbrockmire t1_jdb9a30 wrote

I would quite disagree with the very few people over 30 years.

Regardless of opinion or usage, people know of the ‘tik tok’

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SmokingBirdz t1_jdbaydh wrote

You’re crazy if you think people in their 30’s don’t know what tik tok is lol. Maybe 50, but 30 year olds are either on tik tok themselves, or know exactly what it is but don’t have one themselves.

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listur65 t1_jdbc4mb wrote

I'm 37 and don't know a single person in my age range who doesn't either use it or know exactly what it is. If you changed your 30 to 45 or 50(Coincidently Bowling for Soups age) I would agree.

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ForeverJung t1_jdbdsrb wrote

You have to raise your age range higher. 50 sounds old but it’s really not these days. I know plenty of folks at or approaching that range that all know TikTok

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AnotherSoulessGinger t1_jdbgu9b wrote

I am pushing 50 - I know about it but don’t use it. Most of my peer group knows it but doesn’t use it. We’re stuck on Facebook so we can keep our elderly parents up to date.

My mother in law is almost 70 and she was chiding me for not using TikTok. But she’s an anomaly, I think.

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