I was an early creator on TikTok. Had a few viral videos, reached a modest sized audience before quitting cold turkey after feeling "wrong" about hijacking people's attention.
I wrote a very similar piece about TikTok in a book where I felt so fed up with the state of technology addiction (especially my own with smartphone & apps like TikTok). This article covers one component that I find especially interesting:
> This narrow focus enables a “flow state” to open up between the platform and spectator, as attention is entirely channeled to the content at hand.
Using similar theory from Csikszentmihalyi's flow state, TikTok is the middle path between anxiety and boredom. Thus users feel like they're in a constant state of flow because if they see anything that is "boring" or "anxiety" inducing, they can "easily" and in a "capable" fashion scroll to a new video or search for something that does interest them. The personalized infinite scrolling feed concept emphasizes staying in the center by tuning your content preferences for what might be too much of one of these extremes.
This isn't different from previous social media tactics. This explore and exploit technique is used everywhere by say showing you a cute baby video vs. someone violently being attacked. The dopamine or adrenaline you produce keeps you engaged while algorithms are being personalized when you disengage.