I tried TikTok in 2020 to understand why young people were so much into it. What is so appealing? I've been using the platform, even publishing some videos and commenting a lot, and I still cannot answer why it is so nice. Let me try to verbalise my feelings.
As others remarked here, TikTok has this aspect of freshness. Companies still have to learn how to monetise on it. People just share their lives quite randomly. They are just people. They are not trying to look their best, they are not "Instagram" kind of influencers. All new platforms are like that. Every revolution lowers the entrance barrier and allows new people to become popular or get their message across.
People really miss the times when YouTube just started. There was nothing there, just boring people doing nothing in front of the camera. No makeup, no script, no light, no production value. It was the time before mobile phones, so these were videos made with webcams. Someone opened a box with a new purchase. There wasn't a concept of unboxing. It became a format and made many people rich. There was no concept of daily routine or makeup, or yoga. There were people living their lives and sharing it online. That was very appealing, but these formats were discovered, and companies saw business opportunity because there were so many people watching YouTube. And then the commercialisation killed this early democratic and "flat" YouTube.
YouTube has become professional - it's no longer "You" TV, it's large studios, production companies, big money is involved. If the quality is not good enough, if you don't have backgrounds, good cameras, microphones etc., you won't make it on YT. The barrier of entry has become increasingly high.
TikTok on the other hand has a very very low barrier of entry and it is sort of expected to be consisting of short single hand-held shots, unpolished etc. This will definitely change, and marketing companies will be willing to pay big bucks to make a video look like an amateur youngster's video but at the same time it will be totally controlled and crafted production. It won't last long.
TT as a YT optimisation for mobile is an understatement. The interface and tools for editing videos on the phone are done exceedingly well. Some things could be improved, but the editor is advanced enough to enable creativity and restrictive enough to have a distinct "rough" TikTok style. And frankly... I like it a lot.
And finally - the social aspect. I have reached out to some Tiktokers and met them in person in real live. Some of them I follow and I really like them as human beings. I can imagine we could be friends if we lived in the same place. There is also a lot of interesting people that maybe are not someone you would like to hang out with, but you can learn from them in a light and interesting way. There is a Vietnamese guy who makes sculptures in clay. There are Chinese potters and carpenters that show really brilliant pieces. There are lawyers, statisticians, biologists. They are all really interesting - to me - and without TikTok I wouldn't be able to know about their existence. There is crap there too, but I can just skip the dancing teens and I soon get to the content I like. It works well for me.
No matter how terrible it may sound, I really feel my life has been enriched.
There were many "Aha!" moments in my journey. Here is a couple of honest examples:
* Action Script 3.0 - It may sound stupid and unlikely place, but classes and OOP started to make perfect sense only when I could draw shapes in Flash and then manipulate them with Action Script. Suddenly the idiotic examples of cars, vehicles and bicycles or animals, cats and dogs were unloaded from my mind and OOP really sinked in.
* Java for Dummies - Also unlikely place to look for answers, but TTD and OOP made sense when I read the book many years ago. Somehow when they said "everything is a class in Java, there are no real primitive types" I really started to translate the world into objects. I am not a Java programmer, but it helped a lot.
* Tutorialpoint - YES, I will say it. It is an excellent resource, even if it teaches bad style and is outdated (as some people rightly point). They reduce the number of things to learn. You can refresh your memory on the spot, you can learn (if you have experience) an entire language over one weekend or maximum one week. Afterwards you can go to references and more complicated publications, but they are an excellent starting point.
* Derek Banas on YouTube, especially Design Patterns. The examples could be more real-life based, but he makes sense much better than the original GoF book.
* Code, Tech, and Tutorials on YouTube, especially about CMake.
I have never touched Fortran, but my wife worked on 50 years old code for atmospheric physics / boundary layer modelling. I have no idea how stable it is, and my wife is not cs but a physicist, so wouldn't tell me, but I have a feeling that it's pretty mature.
For me, working for a small/medium company building something real. None of social media, Microsoft, Amazon or Google. Something that builds precision lasers for engineering, something like packaging or manufacturing or warehouse management. That may be boring on the outside and less glamorous than being a "innovation strategist" at TikTok, but these are real, honest, clean jobs that are not ethically questionable and where you test your effectiveness against reality. As long as they are in a stable market you will have job security and decent colleagues around you with pleasant working culture. (Speaking from European perspective).