Tiktok Dependence: An Illusion of Reality in Indian Young Adults

Tiktok use have been under-studied especially in evaluating the contraindication of Tiktok dependence. Tiktok is a video sharing platform through which short videos have been virally circulated. In the application, the individuals enact to a song or a movie scene and circulate among their social media networks. Tiktok application have upshot in India compared to other social media application leading to increased number of younger adults shooting videos for various purpose. Even after the ban, the search for an application similar to Tiktok application have been on-going. Yet, the psychological state of individuals dependent on the application haven’t been explored in a study. The objective of the paper is to understand the experience of using Tiktok application, reasons for use and the perceived benefits. The current study employed a thematic analysis of the participants accounts of their experiences of using TikTok. The study screened individuals through the video sharing application addiction scale (VSAA) after which 8 participants were recruited in the study. There were two major global themes which emerged from the study data: Personal and Decisional characteristics. The personal characteristics gives rise to individual factors, traits, motivation of use for fulfilling personal needs and general attitude towards the application. The decisional characteristics were based on the individual personal account and attitude which also takes into consideration of the social, emotional and cognitive elements leading to overuse of the application. The 16 personality factors of the 8 participants in the study were analyzed. The scores that showed lower in the personality factor continuum were (2) Reasoning, (3) Emotional stability and (13) Openness to change. The factors where the individuals showed higher scores were (11) Privateness and (12) Apprehension. All participants showed consistent scores in the factors mentioned above leading to coherence with the thematic patterns represented in their data codes. The key findings of the study were (1) relationship between personality traits and motivation of TikTok use, (2) the association of loneliness to sense of self leading to comfort seeking, (3) the need for distraction is seen  important in their day-to-day life to avert negative state of mind and (4) the motivation to use is mediated by apprehensive nature of participants and the fear of missing out (FOMO). In conclusion, the study points out to the perceived feeling of happiness were from the genre choices which is reinforcing the behavior of participants to continue use instead of attending to the actual emotional states. The association of their emotional states is evaluated based on the virtual reality and the identity fusion leading to increased dissonance and decreased satisfaction in their general functioning. The present study has been instrumental in finding the association of personality traits to the dependence of TikTok application which is novel in the study of video sharing application platforms. The findings of the study highlight the presence of personality traits, distractive nature of application and the need to escape their current emotional state through the application. The themes emerged covers the cognitive, emotional and social factors in the use of TikTok and their personality association.