#LearnOnTikTok Serendipitously, #LearnOnTikTok Seriously
2023; Volume: 62; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cj.2023.a904634
ISSN2578-4919
Autores Tópico(s)Educational Methods and Impacts
Resumo#LearnOnTikTok Serendipitously, #LearnOnTikTok Seriously Jing Zeng (bio) Show me the life hack that you randomly saw one day that is now an unconscious standard practice in your life. I'll go first … If you are on TikTok, chances are high that you have come across videos featuring this audio template originally created by Kelly Hurst (@thelifebath), a TikToker from Newcastle, United Kingdom.1 Hurst's video led to a life hack sensation on TikTok during the pandemic and has inspired the creation of hundreds of thousands of life hack meme videos, which range from tips on how to effortlessly separate egg yolks using garlic to threading needles with a toothbrush.2 The #LifeHacks memes are just one example of the increasingly popular trend of casual and playful knowledge sharing on TikTok that proliferated during the pandemic. Lockdowns worldwide resulted in a surge in the use of social media to share learning materials, especially on TikTok. Sports and food influencers have used TikTok to demonstrate workouts and cooking tutorials, helping people stay fit and fed, and #MomsOnTikTok and #DadsOfTikTok have relied on the platform to collect and share tips on how to keep kids busy during the lockdown. Science educators are also important contributors to the trend of teaching through TikTok. With the closure of schools due to COVID-19, they turned to TikTok to deliver educational [End Page 174] materials. Public health practitioners followed suit, creating short videos to disseminate health information.3 Aside from these individual-level initiatives, TikTok itself has played a crucial role in amplifying and incentivizing the creation of learning materials on its platform. The pandemic fostered the rapid explosion of TikTok's popularity.4 Furthermore, it provided an opportunity for TikTok to showcase its potential as a learning platform, as opposed to merely a place for jokes and triviality, as many perceived it to be. For instance, TikTok introduced #LearnOnTikTok, a campaign aimed at promoting educational materials on the platform. Through this campaign, TikTok partnered with hundreds of media and educational institutions, as well as individual influencers and experts, to produce professional learning materials.5 Curated content included home improvement tutorials, meditation and yoga tips, lessons from psychologists on how to alleviate stress and anxiety during the lockdowns, and science classes given by celebrity scientists (e.g., Bill Nye) or leading institutions (e.g., Cambridge University). Although the practice of using short videos for educational purposes existed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, TikTok's #LearnOnTikTok campaign catalyzed the professionalization of knowledge creation on TikTok. As life gradually returned to normal in most parts of the world, the hype of the official #LearnOnTikTok campaign may have faded away, but in general educational content on the platform continues to become more prevalent and diverse. When I first started to research learning materials on TikTok in 2018 and 2019, educational content was predominantly STEM related. Examples of popular content included fun science facts; entertaining chemical reactions (e.g., elephant paste demonstrations); and biologists introducing rare animals, plants, or fungi.6 During the pandemic, some emerging educational video topics caught my attention. For instance, female and queer creator-led sex education communities emerged, with a focus on sex positivity and women's health. Another favorite of mine was the #BookTok community, wherein (mostly female Gen Z) booklovers recreated video memes in which they shared and joked about books they had read.7 Since the pandemic, this community has grown into one of the most popular sub-Toks, with related videos amassing almost eighty billion accumulated views at the time of this article's writing. Recommendations made by this TikTok community have become so influential that some book retailers now [End Page 175] even have a designated section for #BookTok recommendations.8 Furthermore, subjects from the humanities, especially history, are now receiving more attention and even viral status on the platform. For instance, Mary McGillivray (@theiconoclass) and Evan Pridmore (@evan.hart) are popular #ArtHistoriansOfTikTok with hundreds of thousands of followers.9 In their fifteen- to sixty-second-long micro lectures, the two creators share fun facts about artists and behind-the-scenes histories of their works, garnering millions of likes. While the platform is known for lighthearted, humorous videos...
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