If you haven’t heard of the app TikTok by now, it’s fair to say that you’ve probably been living under a rock. Some say the app – similar to Vine – is ‘the new YouTube’ and people spend hours scrolling through short videos. As well as posting videos, once an account reaches 1,000 followers, they can live stream.
As someone like myself who likes to go on TikTok, I realised that these live streams may not be as innocent as they seem, and I was surprised that not many people are talking about it. On these live streams, you can purchase virtual coins that give you access to purchase virtual gifts to send to the creator doing the live stream and they may do something in return, such as follow you, look at your Instagram or watch your TikToks.
TikTok changed their gifts recently, and the most expensive one used to be the ‘drama queen’ which was a staggering £48.99. The most expensive virtual gift now is the ‘carousel’ which costs around £30 and the cheapest is the ‘TikTok’ and you can buy 65 of them for 99p. Some people accused TikTok of exploiting fans for money, so it is no wonder they bought the prices down. But is there still a problem?
For someone such as an artist or musician, it can be difficult to make money, but live streaming gives people a platform and an easy pathway into making money. Platforms such as YouTube and Spotify use adverts in order to give creators and artists money. This is something Tik Tok already does, and people can make money from Tik Toks if they have a large following. Live streaming however brings in a much larger sum of money which is why so many creators choose to live stream to bring in revenue. Although this is useful for many creators, they could also be making money from children who don’t necessarily have the money that they are spending.
The BBC decided to do an investigation into this and published an article called TikTok’s young fans ‘exploited’ for digital gifts. They found examples of people being ‘exposed’ in this way such as an 11-year-old who spent £240 purchasing TikTok gifts. Although you must be 13 years old to use the app, younger children are still using it and using their parent’s money.
Since the BBC did their investigation, TikTok has made their gifts cheaper, but it’s still easy to spend lots of money on these gifts, and maybe more so for young children who don’t know the value of money.
On the one hand, spending money on gifts and getting noticed by your favourite creator can mean a lot to some people. When at a concert, VIP tickets to meet an artist are expensive, so in some respect, why should it not cost money to be noticed by an influencer on a live stream? On the other hand though, maybe there should be a spending cap so people don’t spend more than they need to. Spending money on TikTok gifts can be addictive, and maybe something like this should be put in place.
Sites such as Twitch and YouNow also have gifts that can be paid for and sent in on live streams, so TikTok is not the only site doing this. I wanted to write this article because when I was younger, I used to support several artists and watch their TikTok live streams and people would send in sometimes huge amounts of money and to me, something didn’t feel particularly right. After speaking to a few people on Twitter about it at the time, some people agreed with me, and others said that people can spend their money how they want to – they earned the money so they should be able to spend it how they want to?
At the end of the day, TikTok has changed their gifts to make them cheaper, but there could still be an underlying issue. After going on TikTok recently, it appears as if people are not live streaming as much and influencers are focusing more on their content. Altogether, Tik Tok is a great app that people clearly enjoy, but maybe more could be done to safeguard younger children from spending money.
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