“A Necessary Evil”: The Appeal of TikTok and the Emergence of the Conflicted User

This study uses open-ended survey data from a quota sample of 585 adults surveyed via Prolific from across the United States and the United Kingdom to qualitatively examine users’ motivations for embracing or rejecting TikTok. We situate the study as a critical engagement with broader sociopolitical narratives and biases toward non-Western countries, particularly China, amid recent attempts to restrict the Chinese-owned platform in Western democracies. From a theoretical perspective, the study draws on uses and gratifications (U&G) theory and scholarship on the rejection of digital technologies. We employed thematic analysis to examine the open-ended survey responses and identified three categories of TikTok users: avid users, non-users, and conflicted users. Avid users describe four gratifications: cognition, entertainment, casual content creation, and socializing. Non-users reject TikTok because of security concerns, addiction risks, and lack of interest and cultural relevance. Conflicted users express a love-hate relationship with TikTok, viewing it as both enjoyable and problematic. They share some of the same gratifications as avid users while also expressing concerns about data privacy, misinformation, and the app’s ties to China. Although the conflicted user category was the smallest in our sample, we expect conflicted use to grow as international political pressure on TikTok continues to build.