I Let TikTok Control My Viewing Habits for a Week

Before The Good Doctor reminded everyone that he’s a surgeon, was anyone paying attention to the TikTok clips of old TV shows? Personally, I was mostly getting videos of topics I’m passionate about (Taylor Swift, cooking, apartment tours, etc.). But what started as a few viral Family Guy scenes on my “For You� page quickly became regular viewings of Desperate Housewives, and eventually my TikTok feed became a string of randomized clips from cable TV and aughts movies. As someone who grew up flipping through TV channels, jumping from show to show, it’s a strange experience scrolling Gen Z’s favorite app and seeing a dated series like 7th Heaven streaming in multiple parts with comments like “What movie is this?� underneath it. While it pains me that most TikTokers think Desperate Housewives is an Eva Longoria movie, the phenomenon did make me wonder how much time I was spending on the app watching snippets of TV shows (and sometimes entire movies) and just how close TikTok is to replacing the multitudes of streaming services out there for some people.

To figure out just how prolific pirating is on the platform, I logged every single TV episode and movie I got on my TikTok feed over the course of one week and tallied up all the clips to see what TikTok thought I’d be interested in watching and if it actually correlated to my viewing habits — or made me pick up new habits in general.

Wednesday, Day 1

I begin my journey during the most appropriate time to scroll on social media: waiting for somebody to come work on my house. My garage door is broken, so I wait for my landlord’s cousin to arrive to take a look at it. As I scroll, I see my first clip for the experiment, and it’s from a movie I haven’t seen before, Ramona and Beezus (2010). The clip has over 600,000 likes, and most of the comments are from people who also haven’t seen the movie and are impressed by the star power of the cast: Joey King, Sandra Oh, and Selena Gomez. I watch the movie via a series of randomized clips on a TikTok account dedicated to, apparently, this movie. Sure, I could easily watch the movie as the filmmakers intended it to be seen by turning on Disney+, but that would require me to turn on my TV. I get Disney+ free through my phone service, but if that wasn’t an option, it would cost me $4 to rent the movie or $7.99 to sign up for Disney+. The laziest way to watch a movie on TikTok is finding one being livestreamed, but even as I am channeling my hunter-gatherer instinct and scavenging for clips, it takes less effort than putting down my phone and queuing it up on a streaming service.

In between handing off a step stool and watching my garage door crumble, I start getting a few Shameless clips accompanied by slime sensory videos, which will be on the TikTok TV guide for the rest of the week, reminding me against my will how much Debbie sucks. Of the shows and films handed to me on the TikTok platter today, the only ones I haven’t previously seen are Ted, Big Bang Theory, Supergirl, Ramona and Beezus, and Fresh Off the Boat. And none of the remaining clips I was served were shows that I’m a super-fan of. TikTok hasn’t quite figured out what shows I’m into, but it should, especially as I save every link. Right now, it’s throwing what feels like random shows to see what’ll bite.

TV:

Movies:

Total time spent on TikTok: 2 hours

Thursday, Day 2

I don’t have as much time to scroll today, so after only 30 minutes of screen time, I only rack up two clips total: Big Bang Theory and Modern Family. Before this week, I thought The Big Bang Theory was about three women dating nerds, which are, for whatever reason, the clips users are choosing to upload to TikTok.

The other clip of the day was Modern Family, and unlike Big Bang Theory, I stay to watch every clip. Expect more of those throughout the week. The TikTok algorithm presumably is showing me videos related to stuff I’ve already watched to get me to stay on the app. I say presumably because the app keeps the details of their algorithm locked up. Hootsuite, a social-media-management company, guesses that factors like video completion rate and sharing are some of the factors that go into what TikTok shows you. Because I spent yesterday saving clips without a specific pattern, the algorithm hasn’t figured me out and my feed hasn’t been flooded with clips yet. It’s just showing me clips that were popular with other people and not me specifically.

TV:

Movies:

Total time spent on TikTok: 30 minutes

Friday, Day 3

My garage door has finally been fixed, the weekend has arrived, and most important, it’s time to watch the Taylor Swift Eras tour via a TikTok livestream. As I pour a glass of wine preshow, I scroll the app and notice I’m getting clips from a new shows that now feel like old faithfuls, like South Park and Modern Family. Every time a video from one of these shows pops up on my screen, I can’t help but watch, and TikTok knows it. However, the clip of the day is from a Pawn Stars episode where a guy is trying to sell a copy of the Declaration of Independence, and the comment section is full of Nic Cage jokes. You can’t find that on cable.

TV:

Movies:

Total time spent on TikTok: 4 hours

Saturday, Day 4

Before heading out for a show at the Hollywood Bowl (it’s a Game of Thrones concert, a show that I’ve weirdly not gotten any clips of? Wait ’til TikTok discovers the Red Wedding), I turn on some TikTok. The first video is a scene from Undercover Boss, and it contains the worst wig I’ve ever seen in my life. I notice after a few days of what felt like nonstop videos of Euphoria for the first day, Modern Family is back. The clips, which spanned seasons and awkward phases of all the kids, made me want to watch the show again for real — on the big screen (my TV).

TV:

Movies:

Total time spent on TikTok: 45 minutes

Sunday, Day 5

I had a late night, which means I’ll be hanging out on TikTok all morning. In total, I watch 23 clips. I even see a few repeated clips: the FaceTime episode of Modern Family and the South Park episode parodying ICE detention centers. After the morning scroll, the Kardashian content notably doubles, most of it being important moments in Keeping Up With the Kardashians history: the Taylor Swift drama, Kim losing her diamond earring, etc.

Post-Eras-tour livestream, it’s movie-night time. My plan for this experiment was to schedule time to scroll and find a movie to watch through a livestream, since my feed has been flooded with screenings of The Whale, A Good Person, and The Super Mario Bros Movie. A few weeks ago, a TikTok livestream of Mario stated “This [livestream] is completely free and only for people who cannot afford movie ticket and broke like me.� It asked for donations to help support its endeavor through TikTok’s paid gifts during the stream. Despite being readily available on social media like TikTok and Twitter for the past month, the Mario Bros Movie still made over $1 billion worldwide. Surely, after weeks of nonstop Mario streams, I’d easily find one to watch and enjoy?

Tonight, however, options are extremely limited. There are no random Mario Movie livestreams or even a Glee screening as I’d seen in the past. There is a user streaming Moana in a split screen, showing both the film and themselves watching the film, but I’ve seen Moana and I don’t want to watch someone watch it. Scrolling and hopeless, I find a user livestreaming from the inside of an AMC theater to an audience of six people. It’s still showing trailers, and once it gets to Ryan Gosling’s tanned face in the Barbie movie trailer, the screen in the theater goes black. The stream cuts off shortly after, all before I’m able to grab the username to search for the stream again in case it comes back. Was he caught? Did his phone die? I keep searching for another hour before I cut my losses for the evening. The closest thing I found to watching a movie tonight was one clip of Legally Blonde where Elle Woods tells her counselor she wants to go to Harvard. It’s favorite movie of mine, and Miss Woods would definitely object to me watching the movie on anything but a big screen.

Totals:

TV:

Movies:

Total time on TikTok: 4 hours

Final Thoughts

Now that I’m a few days out of the experiment, my FYP is still full of TV and movies clips, and, honestly, I’ve been skipping most of them. As I look at my grand totals for the week, I’m not surprised to see my most-watched show on TikTok is Modern Family. I haven’t actively watched the show since 2014, but watching clips every day made me want to revisit it and actually finish the series. The most readily available shows on TikTok do not include prestige TV (like one of my favorite shows currently airing, Yellowjackets), and while I’ve been enjoying catching up on old favorites, every clip has found me against my will. The app learned that I was saving them every day, assumed I wanted more, then overdelivered. My best guess for why people continue to watch clips of old TV shows they’ve never seen, or movies they’ve never even heard of, is the sense of community that goes with knowing the latest viral moment. The internet’s obsession with Good Doctor memes can be directly tied to a random TikToker dedicated to posting videos of Freddie Highmore in scrubs. And now we’re all on Good DoctorTok.

Would I ever cancel a streaming service just because its content is available on TikTok? Absolutely not. Watching TV and movies on TikTok is in no way a replacement for the real thing (cable, streaming, or otherwise), but it’s truly entertaining to watch a highlight reel of forgotten shows and films. The current burst of random clips gives old IP a second life well after its initial release. That said, will I spend an evening mindlessly scrolling through clips from Ted, feel no attachment to it, and end up watching almost the entire movie just on my tiny phone? I have, I would do it again, and I’ve never, ever been happier.

Final Totals:

TV:

Movies: