Discussing the role of TikTok sharing practices in everyday social life

A crucial element of TikTok consumption is the act of sharing TikTok videos with others, such as friends. In this article I draw on fieldwork with young adult TikTok users based in the United Kingdom to investigate this practice. I show how people use TikTok’s For You Page as a resource to facilitate social relationships at a distance and in settings of physical co-presence. I highlight how TikTok clips are shared in a phatic manner to activate social relationships, for example through communicating messages of ‘thinking about you’ or relating to others through referencing TikTok memes in everyday conversations. Attending to sharing practices, I argue, provides a fruitful way to understand how self-identities and interpersonal relationships are articulated in increasingly social media environments increasingly organized around the logic of ‘personalization’.