Investigating community evolutions in TikTok dangerous and non-dangerous challenges

Abstract

In just few years, TikTok has become a major player in the social media environment, especially with regard to teenagers. One of the key factors of this success is the idea of challenges, that is, video competitions/emulations on a certain topic, which a user can launch and other ones can join. Most of the challenges are fun and harmless. However, there are also users who launch challenges that are dangerous, or at least suitable only for an adult audience (and TikTok is the most popular social network for teenagers). This article focuses primarily on this kind of challenge. In particular, it investigates an aspect not yet studied in the literature, which is the different characteristics and evolutionary dynamics of the communities of users participating in non-dangerous and dangerous challenges. Its final goal is the identification of evolutionary patterns that distinguish the communities of users participating in the two types of challenges. The knowledge of these patterns could be a first step in implementing an approach to the early detection of dangerous challenges in TikTok.