By: Mashnoov Chowdhury ’24, Staff Writer

Chances are if you’ve used the internet frequently within the last couple of years, you’ve probably seen TikTok videos floating around on the web. These video trends are influencing young adults and children around the world. 

     These trends were started by Musical.ly, the predecessor to TikTok, with one notable example being the ice bucket challenge. During the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, users would post videos of themselves pouring ice and water on top of their heads to raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and to encourage people to donate to help continue research to end the disease. 

     After the full global merging of the popular apps TikTok in Asia and Musical.ly in the West, TikTok was fully released in 2018 and many trends emerged. Recently in 2020, school students began sharing videos of themselves stealing school property and called it a “devious lick”, “lick” having already been a slang term for theft. This trend even ended up damaging Bethel High School.

     “The soap dispensers started to get stolen from the boy’s bathroom,” said Dakshesh Amaram ‘24. 

     Many of these incidents ended up being mitigated through detention, suspensions and other punishments that helped to deter the trend. 

     Nowadays, modern TikTok trends include beauty and fashion, gaming, sports, movies, music and other already popular topics. But with the globalization of foreign cultures, such as Asian media, new global trends have become more common in recent months, such as Korean Pop (stylized as “K-pop”), Japanese anime and Korean television. 

     “Learning Japanese seems pretty cool now,” said Skyy Hickson ’24. 

     The rise of Asian entertainment internationally had already begun well before TikTok, but with the implementation of TikTok, the connection between Asia and America has shrunk even further and Asian media has continued to become extremely popular around America. Korean television, especially, has found a huge spotlight in recent TikTok culture, with movies such as “Parasite” being given international attention and shows such as “Squid Game” gaining immediate popularity. 

     TikTok’s influencing has led to immense changes in American and international culture and if it continues to grow, the next generation could become an extremely diverse set of talented people or become destructive and desensitized to danger and fear. At the end of the day, this is up to the users and the outcome of the coming years will become a reflection of the trends they start and how they develop and change the global culture.