On the social network, videos of users filming themselves studying are followed assiduously, sometimes by thousands of people. But why?
No challenges, no wild dances. You won’t find any of the usual TikTok codes on these lives. Yehya Mougharbel, a 22-year-old tiktoker, has more than 500,000 subscribers, who follow his “lives”, moments when he films himself live with his phone, studying. Silent, bent over his desk, this marketing student at the University of Surrey only speaks to answer some questions asked in a dedicated chat, during 10-minute breaks, after 50 minutes of uninterrupted work.
“People just enjoy watching me study,” he says. “They study alongside me, and they feel less alone. At first my main reason for doing those streams was for myself – for keeping me accountable and keeping me on track to get my work done. Once I saw people using it and finding it useful, then it just became a win-win situation,” he says.
For David Dieu, a 22-year-old Belgian tiktokeur with 137,000 subscribers, “there are curious people and people who want real work techniques, I try to guide them as best I can,” he says.
The Chinese social network, with its powerful referencing algorithm, can send many people “by chance” to such videos.
