The Adults of Tik Tok Want to Educate and Entertain You
The hot new video sharing app isn’t just teenagers producing memes and miming along to their favorite pop songs
Among the teens creating TikTok videos about the undeniable, bone level differences between freshmen and sophomores, you can find Jenny and Mike Krupa, both 88-years-old, explaining the perks of being octogenarians.
Though the senior citizens’ account (@its_j_dog) is run and scripted by their 19-year-old grandson Skylar (“I knew people really enjoyed watching elderly individuals on social media,” he says), the couple is far from the only people over 21 on this platform often thought of as a strictly Gen Z space. Users in their late 20s, 30s, and beyond are using TikTok just like the kids do, to explain their lives with the help of memeable music clips. But while teens use the app to reenact their lives spent in high school halls, older users see the platform as a place to explain and explore their jobs.
Adults — possibly even old enough that they wouldn’t think to use “adulting” to describe their jobs or their content — are creating videos that bring their fans into the world of medicine (doctors, nurses, and plenty of paramedics are showing off their stethoscopes), firefighting, teaching, and even zoology. While…
