If you‘re a TikTok user in 2024, you‘ve probably experienced the frustration of the app crashing at the most inconvenient times. One minute you‘re engrossed in the latest viral dance challenge, and the next you‘re staring at a frozen screen or your phone‘s home screen. It‘s enough to make even the most level-headed teen or young adult scream into their pillow.
But have you ever stopped to wonder why TikTok crashes so frequently compared to other apps? The answer lies deep in the technical weeds of how the app is built and the mind-boggling scale it operates at. Buckle up, because we‘re about to geek out.
The Architectural Challenges of Running an App Like TikTok
Under the hood, TikTok is a vastly complex application with a so-called microservices architecture. In plain English, that means the app is made up of many small, independently running services that talk to each other – for example, there‘s a service for uploading videos, a service for the For You feed, a service for direct messages, and so on.
This setup allows for faster development of new features, but it also introduces many potential points of failure. If just one microservice goes down, it can trigger a cascade of failures that crash the entire app. The more moving parts you have, the higher the risk that something will break.
On top of this architectural complexity, TikTok has the challenge of immense scale. As of late 2021, TikTok had surpassed 1 billion monthly active users worldwide watching hundreds of millions of videos every single day. Every 60 seconds, 167 million TikTok videos are watched – that‘s nearly 2,800 videos per second.
All of those videos need to be uploaded, processed, stored, and streamed in real-time, placing a huge strain on TikTok‘s infrastructure. The app runs on a combination of cloud platforms including Amazon Web Services and Alibaba Cloud, but even these enterprise-grade providers can buckle under the load.
And we haven‘t even talked about TikTok‘s secret sauce – the algorithm. The app‘s uncanny ability to surface videos that keep you hooked is powered by machine learning models that are computationally expensive to run. Every video needs to be analyzed and its performance measured to inform future recommendations.
When you step back and look at the full picture, it‘s a small miracle that TikTok isn‘t crashing every five minutes. But that‘s little consolation when you‘re in the middle of making the perfect lip sync video and the app grinds to a halt.
TikTok Isn‘t the Only App that Crashes
To be fair, TikTok is hardly the only social media platform to experience major outages. In fact, it‘s in pretty good company. Cast your mind back to the Great Facebook Outage of October 2021, which took down not only the big blue app but also Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger for a whopping six hours. Talk about a social media apocalypse.
Or how about Snapchat, the app that practically invented the concept of ephemeral content? In its early days of rapid growth, Snapchat experienced outages so frequently that they almost became part of the app‘s brand. "Is Snapchat down or is it just me" was the refrain of many a frustrated teen in the mid-2010s.
And let‘s not forget about Twitter, the platform that‘s been plagued by technical woes for much of its existence. Between the fail whale era of its early years and the more recent spate of DDoS attacks and infrastructure failures, it‘s a wonder that Twitter is still standing.
The point is, running a massive real-time social app is hard. Really hard. TikTok is certainly not immune to the technical challenges that have brought down its peers, but it‘s also not uniquely vulnerable. The frequency of TikTok crashes is more a testament to its mind-boggling popularity and growth than any particular failing on the part of its developers.
The Human Impact of a TikTok Outage
But enough about the technical mumbo jumbo. What about the human cost of a TikTok outage? For the app‘s predominantly young user base, a crash is more than just a temporary annoyance – it‘s a major disruption to their social lives and creative outlets.
Consider these stats:
- 63% of TikTok users are between the ages of 10-29
- The average user spends 89 minutes per day on the app, more than Facebook
- 83% of users have posted a video on TikTok
For many Gen Z and younger Millennials, TikTok is their primary social media platform and a major part of their daily routine. It‘s where they connect with friends, follow the latest trends, and express themselves creatively. When the app goes down, it can feel like being cut off from the world.
TikTok influencers and creators also feel the pain of an outage acutely. For the app‘s biggest stars, like Charli D‘Amelio (126 million followers) and Addison Rae (86 million followers), TikTok is more than just a hobby – it‘s a full-time job and a major source of income. A single sponsored post from a top TikToker can fetch upwards of $500,000.
During a crash, that‘s all potential revenue down the drain. Imagine being a small business owner and having to close up shop unexpectedly for a few hours or even a full day. That‘s the scale of financial impact a TikTok outage can have on its creator community.
Of course, even for TikTokers who aren‘t raking in the big bucks, an outage is still a big deal. It means a missed opportunity to connect with their audience, grow their following, and join in on the latest viral trend. In the fast-moving world of TikTok, even a few hours offline can feel like an eternity.
The Lighter Side of a TikTok Crash
But hey, at least TikTok crashes give us all a chance to bond over our shared misery, right? If there‘s one thing that unites the internet, it‘s complaining about technology not working.
Whenever TikTok starts crashing, you can count on Twitter to light up with memes, jokes, and commiseration. "Everyone rushing to Twitter to see if TikTok is down," one user tweeted during a recent outage, accompanied by a video of crowds stampeding into a store on Black Friday.
Even TikTok stars get in on the action. "TikTok down? Time to touch some grass I guess," quipped TikToker @lorengray to her 54 million followers during an outage. "TikTok crashed again? I thought Charli was posting," joked @joealbanese, referencing TikTok queen Charli D‘Amelio.
And who could forget the great TikTok outage of July 2021 when users started posting videos of themselves literally touching grass, a nod to the common refrain that chronically online folks need to get outside more. That‘s the beauty of TikTok – even when it‘s not working, it still manages to entertain.
What TikTok is Doing to Prevent Crashes
Jokes aside, TikTok‘s developers are well aware of the frustration that outages cause for users and are actively working to improve the app‘s stability. In an April 2022 blog post, TikTok‘s engineering team detailed some of the steps they are taking to prevent crashes and speed up recovery times:
- Implementing chaos engineering practices to simulate and prepare for failure scenarios
- Improving monitoring and alerting to detect and respond to issues faster
- Automating error handling and recovery processes to minimize downtime
- Regularly load testing infrastructure to ensure it can handle spikes in traffic
- Investing in more resilient and scalable cloud architecture
Of course, no amount of engineering can completely eliminate the risk of outages. As long as TikTok continues to grow and innovate at its current breakneck pace, there will always be the potential for something to break. But by prioritizing reliability and investing in robust infrastructure, TikTok is working to make crashes less frequent and less disruptive when they do happen.
The Bottom Line
At the end of the day, a TikTok crash is a bit like a power outage. It‘s annoying, it‘s disruptive, and it always seems to happen at the worst possible moment. But it‘s also a reminder of just how much we rely on technology in our daily lives and how quickly we‘ve come to take it for granted.
For a generation that‘s grown up with social media as a constant presence, a TikTok outage isn‘t just an inconvenience – it‘s a glimpse into an alternate reality where they‘re cut off from their digital lives and forced to find other ways to entertain themselves. Oh, the horror!
But maybe, just maybe, a TikTok crash is also an opportunity. An opportunity to put down our phones for a few minutes, to step away from the endless scroll, and to reconnect with the world beyond our screens. An opportunity to remember that there‘s more to life than likes, follows, and viral videos.
So the next time TikTok crashes, take a deep breath, make yourself a snack, and find something else to do for a little while. Read a book, call a friend, go for a walk – the possibilities are endless. And when the app inevitably comes back online, you can dive right back into the wonderful, wacky world of TikTok with a newfound appreciation for all that it brings to your life.
Just don‘t get too comfortable – the next crash is always just around the corner. Such is life in the age of the app.
