When you say TikTok, many people here at Abraham Lincoln High School would be instantly drawn your words. As the app continues to grow and flourish, its growing audience has allowed it to become one of the biggest apps of the past year. Many students have recently been becoming more involved with the app and have even started making content of their own, however, not very many of them are away of its history. 

Before its rise in popularity and even before TikTok existed, another app stood in its place; Musical.ly. Starting in the early year of 2016, Musical.ly’s fun and easy-to-create content quickly amassed over 200 million users. Despite these numbers, the years following were not as successful for the app and by 2018, they knew it was time for a change. In efforts to bring back their past viewers and a new audience. A large Chinese corporation called ByteDance purchased the app for nearly 1 billion dollars. TikTok officially merged with Musical.ly on August 2 of 2018.

Seeing the new changes to the app, many people looked into the app and in the following October, TikTok became the most downloaded app in the United States. Now, in November of 2019, TikTok continues to thrive. 

Many students here have TikTok accounts of their own. Some of them make content of their own and others just have the app to enjoy what others post. 

“It is an app where people post short videos that are either funny or where they are dancing to music,” senior Julian Kreuzinger said. 

Because of its recent popularity, many people are gaining exposure to content from TikTok without using the app, whether that be through compilations on YouTube, or videos sent on other platforms.

“I don’t even need to download it because I get the videos sent to me from everyone, so I see all the funny ones anyways,“ Kreuzinger said. 

On TikTok, there are many different types of content to create. Many students at ALHS, in fact, create content of their own for others to enjoy. 

“I think it’s a cool way for teenagers to express themselves through videos,” sophomore Abbi Dominguez said. “I make them with my friends because I think they are fun and entertaining to watch.” 

As the app is at its peak performance, countless amounts of students begin to get involved and the app continues to grow and thrive.