Examining intergenerational family members’ creative activities during COVID-19 lockdown via manifest content analysis of YouTube and TikTok videos

With limited activities to conduct at home during the pandemic lockdowns, families worldwide have turned to social media to socialize and cope with the impacts of isolation. Likewise, online content-sharing sites has been seen as a promising avenue for family units to conduct creative activities together as a form of bonding and coping during the COVID-19 lockdown. As such, this investigation was undertaken to understand the landscape of intergenerational families’ creative activities showcased on digital content-sharing platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok. The analysis of the surface characteristics of collected YouTube (n = 50) and Tiktok (n = 446) videos in this study revealed that April 2020 (YouTube = 28%; Tiktok = 28.97%) was the month were most videos featuring creative activities by intergenerational families were uploaded. Interestingly, most of the videos uploaded came from North American countries (YouTube = 54%; Tiktok = 52.91%). Vlogging (52%) was found to be the most practiced creative activities by intergenerational families on YouTube during the COVID-19 lockdown months while for Tiktok, recreation of family photos (13.84%) was preponderant. The implications the study’s findings, limitations and recommendations were also discussed.