With a new side job called TikTok Shop, high school students are putting their social media marketing abilities to the test. Even though TikTok prohibits minors from applying to the program, teenagers on the app are generating millions of views with the new function.
Six TikTok accounts that have posted several TikTok Shop videos over the previous two weeks have been found by NBC News. They were all publicly identified as being under the age of 18.
A TikTok official said in a statement in response to inquiries regarding the presence of teens on TikTok Shop that “as TikTok Shop rolls out in the US, we keep improving our safeguards & are taking steps to address this issue.” When creating an account on TikTok, users are prompted for their age, but this creates a security flaw because children can pretend to be older.
The results are the most recent example of how people are swiftly utilizing the TikTok Shop’s ability to earn money. Since its September launch, the function has grown in popularity, and TikTok seems to be having trouble controlling how users are utilizing it. It also exemplifies the quick impact on the internet of the new TikTok Shop system, which pushes producers to produce internet advertising quickly.
One of the creators developed a TikTok Shop advertising for $4 women’s leggings that indicated the wearer “may get pregnant” as a joke about how cute the wearer would look in the leggings. This artist claimed to be 16 on his profile, which had over 33,000 followers. The adolescent danced to the song “Billie Jean” in the video, which features Michael Jackson singing, “But the kid is not my son… ” Over 1.1 million people have seen another promotional video for the leggings that the same adolescent created, in which he imagined a “10/10 baddie” donning them.
Since its launch two weeks ago, TikTok Shop has generated significant buzz in the social media advertising space, acting as a platform for a novel form of commission-based advertising. With TikTok Shop, users can promote almost any app store product and earn a commission on each transaction. Additionally, the business makes it simple for both big and little shops to offer their products online.
The algorithm that decides the “For You” page is used to offer TikTok Shop videos to users, which means that videos that receive a lot of engagement rapidly are frequently pushed out to even larger audiences practically immediately.
As a result, there has been a seemingly constant stream of TikTok Shop videos hawking a variety of goods, including questionable health supplements and unbelievable technology. Some TikTok Shop videos contain clips that the artist has plagiarized from sources like podcasts in order to promote unrelated goods. In that instance, neither the content nor the product is associated with the originator.
Many of the creators that use TikTok Shop are adults, and often they either manufacture the product they’re promoting, are sponsored by the business whose items they’re advertising, or they purchase the products to test them out before advertising them.
Some teenagers seem to have joined in as well, recording movies with backdrops that resemble high schools, including lockers, desks, and halls. Even during class, some are being videotaped.
A few TikTok Shop creators don’t seem to use or purchase the goods they’re hawking. Some people are just pasting text with a request to buy the goods over a plain background. Others have even created a series of movies promoting the same thing repeatedly, dozens or even hundreds of times, in an effort to earn at least one algorithmic victory.
Although teens shouldn’t utilize the TikTok Shop feature, they have managed to do so thanks to the voluntary age submission method. While TikTok requests proof of identification from artists who are selling their own goods, those who are merely promoting the goods of others are exempt from this need.
The TikTok Shop Content Policy states that “Creators are prohibited from uploading, posting, streaming, or sharing any content that targets minors,” including content that aims to convince minors to purchase goods or services or to convince their parents to do so.
Despite being sold by numerous American creators, the majority of the goods sold on TikTok Shop are from China.
The same adolescent created a video for a $10 studded belt that read, “Imagine your parents just whooping you.” Over 1.2 million people have watched that video. All three films were created by the teen on the same day.
The adolescent promoted leggings from a Chinese company called Ying Fu Apparel, situated in Zhejiang, according to TikTok Shop. The belt was made by a Zhejiang-based company called “HeartinBelt.”
Some teenagers who create TikTok Shop videos use the things they are promoting. One girl, who identified herself as 15 years old, created a lip-sync video for the Radiohead song “Creep” on TikTok Shop. She promoted the Radiohead T-shirt she wore in the video, claiming that it was “cute af” and “only cost me like $1.27.” There were 2.8 million views of her video.
The seller of the garment, who is headquartered in Missouri and sells a variety of music-related goods on TikTok Shop, has set the price range for it at $13.99 to $58.99.
TikTok Shop has been compared to well-known Chinese fast-fashion retailers like Shein and Temu, but according to company officials, they see TikTok Shop more along the lines of Amazon.
In some senses, TikTok Shop has arisen as an entirely new notion — fast-advertising production rather than fast-fashion production. Affiliate marketing, a form of influencer brand marketing made popular by bloggers in the early to mid-2000s, is approached with no holds barred.
Affiliate marketing is when a brand, such as Shein, hires a social media influencer to produce content to promote their clothing. The influencer frequently receives an “affiliate code,” which customers can use like a promo code. The influencer earns a portion of the sales made with their code because they are an affiliate.
This idea is streamlined by TikTok Shop so that businesses no longer require influencer marketing personnel and creators no longer require influencer status. Anyone with 5,000 or more followers on TikTok can start creating affiliate material for the TikTok Shop, though NBC News has also found accounts with fewer followers producing TikTok Shop videos.
Users must be 18 and give accurate tax and banking information in order to register for TikTok Shop, according to the platform’s guidelines.