[randomdata]

TikTok is not social media. It is cable TV.

Instagram, being quite old at this point, still has some vestiges of social media to keep the older people who started using it decades ago happy, but it too is moving towards the cable TV model as much as it can.

[charlie90]

Anything with a comment section is social media in my eyes, TikTok has a comment section. So does YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, and all the other popular social media sites.

[elashri]

You have an old mental view about social media that teens would disagree with you. They will do communicate and engage in trends on tiktok. They don't engage in text as much as we did.

[randomdata]

Some teenagers trying to become the next TV star is not the same as them using social media. Social media is not defined by text, but it is defined by community. TikTok, and increasingly Instagram (and even, more and more, Facebook), has no real semblance of community. These services would rather show you a beautiful stranger that has no relevance to your life than foster a neighbourhood, just like cable TV always has. Social media is from a bygone area and, let's face it, is mostly dead at this point, only marginally propped up by some old people still trying to live in the past.

I understand how it can be confusing, though. Many services that were built to foster community originally, and given the social media moniker at that time, are transitioning (if not fully transitioned already) into being cable TV providers to try and remain relevant with the slow death of social media, so it can be easy to forget that times are a changing and still think of them as being social media even when they are no longer. Indeed, people tend to be quite susceptible to getting an idea in their head and then holding onto that idea forevermore, not looking again to see if anything has changed.