Why TikTok cultivates self-expression better than Instagram
Despite being very similar apps on paper, the experience of posting content on TikTok and Instagram is arguably quite different, with TikTok’s climate lending better to self-expression. In this post, I will explain why this is the case, in terms of (1) audience and (2) content reputation. I will then explain why these factors are irreversible obstacles for Instagram while, conversely, there is an opportunity for TikTok to take them even further.
Differences in posting climate
- Audience (Strangers vs. People You Know)
TikTok’s algorithm exposes users to content posted largely by strangers. In contrast, Instagram is used much more like Facebook: allowing users to stay in-touch with people they know in real life. This is evidenced by a Statista poll that shows 46% of Instagram users reporting using Instagram to stay in touch with friends, compared to 22% of TikTok users (Statista, 2020).
Why does this matter? Earlier this year, I interviewed 6 TikTok users and asked them why they don’t post [more] TikToks, and they all explained that they fear the judgement of people they know in real life — but NOT of strangers. Thus, while based on a small sample, my hypothesis is that people fear the judgement of people they know in real life significantly more than of strangers online.
By exposing users to more strangers than real-life connections, TikTok thus provides users with more protection from the eyes of people they know in real life; and if my theory is correct, this allows TikTok to be a safer space for self-expression.
This translates not only to TikTok videos, but also comments. Whether a TikTok be comedic or even political, the reduced fear of judgement enables users to co-create and build upon the content in the comments section — adding their own hot takes and punchlines. As a result, the rich comments section on TikTok serves as an extension of the content, whereas on Instagram, a relatively less rich comments section exists more-so as a passive reaction to the content, which might as well be restrictd to emojis 💅🙏🧚♂️
2. Content Reputation (Spontaneous vs. Premeditated)
The design of Instagram has always lended to curation. When crafting a post, the user is prompted to select photos or videos from their camera roll. A user’s posts then come together, in a grid format, to define their profile page. As a result of these design decisions, in the early days of Instagram, it quickly became the norm for users to curate their profiles in order to maintain an aesthetically pleasing ‘grid’ (literally just Google ‘Instagram grid’ and see how many resources pop up). This curation was achieved through filters, provided by hundreds of photo editing applications such as VSCO.
As such, in its early days, Instagram content quickly gained a reputation for being premeditated and manicured.
In recent years, the aesthetic pendulum has interestingly swung away from this curation and towards ‘casual’ photos that look unedited — but Instagram’s reputation hasn’t budged. Instagram content continues to be widely recognized as manicured and performative. Even the least manicured content — blurry, low quality, seemingly spur-of-the-moment — is perceived as highly calculated (see: Social media looks casual again. But is the casual Instagram aesthetic more performative than ever?).
Thus, the impregnable reputation of Instagram content as highly manicured makes even the most spontaneous of posts look highly calculated and intentional. This heightens the stakes of posting content, as it is bound to be perceived as highly intentional and thought-through.
Inversely, TikTok has always been designed for spontaneous videos, which has given its content a reputation for being — well — spontaneous. As such, it can be argued that the content is perceived as less thought-through — for it’s unlikely that you spent days editing it and writing and re-writing your caption. Thus, the audience is likely to be more forgiving, lowering the stakes of posting a TikTok.
Why Instagram is forever damned
Thus, key differences in the audiences and content reputation of TikTok lend to a safer space for self-expression. And while Instagram can — and does — replicate every UI element that made TikTok so successful, it will never be TikTok. This is because it cannot change the nature of its audience and content reputation. Here is why:
Audience — Much of Instagram’s value proposition (at least 54%) relies on staying in touch with friends (versus TikTok’s ~20%). Shielding users from the judgement of people they know would thus cannibalize 54%+ of Instagram’s value proposition.
Content reputation — ‘Casual’ posting has been trending on Instagram since 2020 (see: Instagram casual posting is the antithesis to aesthetic influencer culture), yet its reputation hasn’t budged. Furthermore, the market for spontaneous photo-taking is now inhabited by Snapchat as well as a beloved newcomer, BeReal. Thus, Instagram — unless a new archival photo app comes around — will forever be archival.
Opportunity for TikTok
One of my key hypotheses here is that, by exposing users more to strangers’ content than that of people they know IRL, TikTok enables self-expression. But there is room to take it further, following in the footsteps of Tumblr, a social media platform known for the privacy it allows users. I could [and may] write a whole blog post just about this, but in short:
“Tumblr is a social space defined by its separation from the offline world, where identities are flexible, massive amounts of content lend to obscurity to individual posts and users…The kind of privacy Tumblr affords offers many users a safer space for expression than they are accustomed to finding elsewhere, a fact that is central to many people’s experiences of Tumblr as a whole.” (Burton, 2017, pg. 129 )
What’s stopping TikTok from being a safe space like Tumblr? The answer is very simple: demanding access to user’s contacts (from their phone and other social medias) and, without giving them a clear option, pushing their content to these contacts — and contacts of contacts. You can allegedly turn this off through a feature buried in settings, however several users have expressed that this doesn’t work 100% . Thus, with the option being (A) buried and (B) faulty, I’d pose that the fear of exposure/judgement persists among many users.
With a few minor design tweaks, TikTok could easily eliminate users’ fear of judgement by people they know IRL. If this fear is the main obstacle preventing all 6 users that I interviewed from posting content, imagine the difference that eliminating it would make. Image how many more users would be posting content.
Thus, my recomendations to TikTok would be to consider the following menu of options:
- Make the setting I illustrated above bulletproof — and rather than burying it in settings, (1) make it accessible in the user flow of posting a video, and (2) advertise it in the app to build awareness
- Even better: create a new privacy option, strangers only, which blocks contacts and contacts of contacts from viewing a video until/unless it reaches 10k likes (at which point, I’d argue, it’s no longer embarrassing but impressive)
- When you send a TikTok via text, if the other person views it, TikTok exposes their profile and suggests that you follow it. Stop this immediately.
Let me know what you think about my ideas.
Sources:
Burton, Julian Tavis Dale. (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2017) https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3WH2T1G.