A Post-TikTok World: What Now?

What will Gen Z do with an extra 2 hours per day?

Jan 17, 2025

In two days, TikTok will be stripped from the app store, and from the hands of its 100M+ monthly active users in the US.

Over the last four years, TikTok has become the centerpiece of modern marketing - a fulcrum accelerating culture and consumer behavior, remodeling and revamping traditional models of influence, trust, and discovery.

Quickly, TikTok became the “answer” for marketing to Gen Z - and soon enough, nearly all audiences. And so, paralyzed by a platform that both dictated culture and re-engineered the trend cycle to become almost meaningless, we formed a dependency on the platform - as both its users and as the brands trying to reach them.

We have a long list of questions - both from our clients and from our ruminations. And while we work to uncover the answers, what is clear is this - the ban signals a new era of culture. An era precipitated by a stagnated marketing and creative landscape (see brand soup), and one now intertwined more than ever with politics and social change.

Over the next three months, we will follow the evolution of consumer behavior in a post-TikTok world.

We set up a longitudinal digital ethnography that starts on Tuesday, following the lives, mindsets, moods, and minutes spent of 8 TikTok-obsessed Gen Z’ers. Over the next three months, we’ll engage daily with this group through our Group Chat methodology, gathering real and raw insights through screen time submissions, group chat conversations, DMs, content hunting and gathering, focus groups, 1:1 interviews, and more.

We’re going Inside Gen Z - and will share tidbits, screenshots, recordings, convos, quotes & more through this newsletter as we unveil and unlock insights that address some of culture’s most pressing questions.

For now, our journey starts with one simple and powerful question. What now?

Where will we go, or more importantly, how will we spend our time?

We know active TikTok Gen Z users spent an average of nearly 2 hours per day on TikTok in 2024. That equates to just over 29 full days per year on TikTok alone.

If you had two hours regained per day, where would you spend that time?

We asked Gen Z…if TikTok gets banned, how will you spend your time?

On January 14th, we asked our research network of Gen Z’ers a simple question - if TikTok gets banned, how will you spend your time?

Here is what more than 350 Gen Z’ers said:

What to make of this?

Many more questions lie ahead - for one, this is simply predictive behavior. Sure, the answer for many may feel simple - a switch to other socials. Reels, Shorts, Rednote, etc…something there should do the job, right? But what happens when rubber meets the road, and on Sunday this future-state becomes a reality? Perhaps those climbing to other socials will find that void still unmet and unfulfilled. Perhaps those planning to read more, to go outside, and to develop new hobbies will be won over by platforms incentivizing new user growth at all costs.

Or perhaps it is the beginning of a new era of social and culture - a cultural splintering, where the power of a single platform to influence mass cultural shifts is lost.

The only certainty is now uncertainty - and the fragility of brands propped solely by TikTok’s prominence will be on display for all to see.

Stay tuned as we follow our new reality unfold in real time.

A Post-TikTok World: What Now?

What will Gen Z do with an extra 2 hours per day?

We asked Gen Z…if TikTok gets banned, how will you spend your time?

Top 20 answers:

What to make of this?

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