Diffusion Theory explains how, why, and at what rate technology and new ideas spread. In The Diffusion of Innovations Theory, there are different categories that people fall into. These are Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.
Innovators are people who are open to risks and the first ones to try new ideas
Early Adopters are people who are interested in trying new technologies and establishing their utility in society
Early Majority are those who are part of the general population and pave the way for a use of an innovation in mainstream society.
Late Majority are those who are apart of the general population who follow the early majority into adapting the innovation as a part of their daily life.
Laggards are those who "lag" the general population into adopting the innovative ideas of products into society. They do not want to adopt these ideas because they are risk-averse and don't want to change the way that they do things. These people are ultimately forced to adopt these new innovations because they can not conduct their daily work or life without it.
The new innovation that I want to focus on is TikTok. TikTok was created in 2018 in China, and spread to the United States very quickly. Before TikTok, an app called Musically existed and was a platform where people posted videos of themselves lip-sinking to music. China bought Musically and changed the app to the name TikTok.
TikTok was popular among teen users, but its popularity drastically increased during the 2020 COVID pandemic during quarantine. TikTok became popular at such a fast rate for many reasons. The platform is extremely easy to use and access which new users can grasp quickly. The types of posts also are what increases the usage of TikTok. There are videos of sports, art, music, cooking, and anything you can imagine. This platform has turned into videos of everything and anything, not just lip sinking to songs, which makes it appealing to a bigger audience.
Many peoples became early adopters of TikTok because they had musically and it changed into TikTok so they already had the app. The early majority would be people during quarantine who adopted the app because they were bored and had nothing else to do and because it became a trend. They learned quarantine activities and recipes which they needed the app to access.
The late majority are people who downloaded TikTok after its peak during quarantine and heard about the popularity so they wanted to join. Its increasing popularity made them feel as if they were left out as TikTok started to become important in society.
The laggards are people who did not want to download TikTok for many reasons including the addiction that people have to using the app, and security risks. Many people who have the app use it for hours a day and don't want to put they're phones down. They use it at night before they sleep and in the morning when they wake up. The laggards have not come to the point where they have to download the app out of force because it has not fully taken over society.
I personally do not think that TikTok will ever fully take over society because it is owned by China. As China and the US have a worse relationship, less people feel safe using the TikTok app.
It is very interesting to see the affects of new innovations and how new technologies become so important in the everyday lives of people.
Sources: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/diffusion-of-innovations-theory.asp
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