The time of pandemic was a turning point in the life of every person, especially the ones living in a civilized society. It had a negative impact on the economy of each country, however, there are some sectors which have benefited from it. One of those is of course the industry of the online and digital world.
People were forced to change their habits. Not only the way they work, but also the approach to entertainment. The pandemic and lockdown caused by it made it impossible to participate in almost all outdoor events.
It was obvious that the internet would become the “go-to” place when talking about leisure activity and indeed that is exactly what has happened.
All platforms for streaming and organizing meetings have experienced a huge boom, which can be observed by simply looking at their skyrocketed stock prizes.
They have enabled remote work and became the place where most of us spend at least a few hours daily.
But the work-related platforms are not the only ones that gained massively from the pandemic.
The other group which gained even more popularity is oriented toward spare time. When talking about facebook, netflix or youtube. Since the “real-life activities” such as sports became almost inaccessible the attention has been attracted by game-streaming apps such as twitch or other entertainment purpose applications like tik tok and real life sports had to take a backseat.
All those graphs show that the companies that were already big before the coronavirus pandemic became even bigger = even more wealthy.
The question is: What about us? What about individual users, that used to lead a normal life?
As one can probably expect there isn’t one way to answer such questions. Some users found a way to benefit from all the chaos that’s been happening lately.
Saying “some” I am speaking mostly about younger internet surfers, who do not have a problem with adapting to virtual reality and whose every day stronger growing influencers motivate them to try becoming stars themselves, which has been quickly realized by the social media giants.
For example Tik-Tok algorithms work in such a way that even the least popular users have a chance to break through and even go viral. This way a user never knows when his or hers video will shoot up, which works as a motivational booster.
To conclude it can be stated, that nothing unexpected has really happened. People forced to stay at home started using online communicators and social media in order to make up for feelings of loneliness. When talking about the individual people, the ones, who seem to go through the pandemic leastly affected, are the ones well prepared. The ones for whom living online is nothing new – the youngest.
Sources :
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/07/technology/coronavirus-internet-use.html
https://blog.globalwebindex.com/chart-of-the-week/social-media-amid-the-outbreak/
I liked your blog, but do you think that if there was no pandemic, there wouldn’t be such a demand for TikTok, etc.?
Of course there would still be demand for such platforms.
But I am sure, that it would not be that extremely high.
Btw thank you for reading and taking time to comment on my blog 🙂
To be honest, I disagree with the fact that in Tik-Tok everyone can become popular only because of the algorithm. I am sure that, firstly, the algorithms are based on hashtags and consumer preferences, and secondly, it based on the country. In my native country, there were videos only from it, plus my personal preferences, but when I moved to Poland, I have a tik-tok feed completely in Polish video:( And also it’s equally important to shoot trends.
I agree, that shooting trends and posting adequate hashtags is important. But I think, that when you compare tiktok to for example instagram, the chances of you going viral on tik-tok are much higher if we consider putting same amount of work to both platforms.
And by saying “hashtags” in my post I meant exactly what you have written.
Anyway thank you for reading and taking time to comment.