McLuhan And The TikTok Ban

➡️ TikTok was unique among social media in that it was largely a passive medium, more similar to YouTube than to, say, Personal Social Media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, where people primarily interact with people they actually know IRL, sharing things they might share IRL, with some background noise from brands and influencers.

➡️ It was also different than Public Social Media sites like Twitter, Threads, and Bluesky, where many users passively consume posts from journalists and other influencers, but where many are also happy to share their opinions and hot takes with the world at large.

➡️ To use McLuhan’s taxonomy, TikTok is a passive or “hot” medium (high-definition and low participation), in many ways similar to YouTube and television, where users mostly sit back and watch videos created by people they do not know personally, with little left to interpret or complete. This contrasts with Personal and Public Social Media, which are “cool” media (low-definition and high participation), requiring users to actively create or fill in content to make the platforms valuable.

➡️ One asterisk is that TikTok users can (and frequently do) like and comment on videos, blurring the line between hot and cool media.

➡️ By that measure, YouTube might seem the logical beneficiary of TikTok’s demise. However, YouTube’s algorithm—less personalized and slower at surfacing niche content—makes it less effective at replicating TikTok’s appeal.

➡️ IG Reels could also gain, but Instagram remains a hot medium for most users, focused on photos and videos from friends and family. Influencer content, while often significant, tends to take a secondary role to personal connections.

Alan Wolk

Alan Wolk veteran media analyst, former agency executive, and author of "Over The Top. How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry" is Co-Founder and Lead Analyst at TVREV where he helps networks, streamers, agencies, brands and ad tech companies navigate the rapidly shifting media landscape. A widely published columnist, speaker and industry thinker, Wolk has built a following of 300K industry professionals on LinkedIn by speaking plainly and intelligently about TV and the media business. He is also the guy who came up with the term “FAST.”

https://linktr.ee/awolk
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