The Wildly Popular TikTok App
TikTok has exploded in popularity, becoming one of the most widely used social media platforms in the world. According to BusinessofApps, TikTok was downloaded over 850 million times in 2020 alone. With over 1 billion monthly active users, TikTok’s addictive short video format has proven to be a massive hit.
However, unlike most other social media apps, TikTok lacks one standard user interface element – the progress bar. While watching a video on YouTube or Facebook, you can see how much of the video has elapsed and how much is left. But on TikTok, once a video starts playing, there is no indicator showing the time progression. This is an intentional design choice by TikTok with implications for user experience and advertising strategy.
What is a Progress Bar?
A progress bar is a visual indicator that shows users how much of a video they have watched and how much is left. It is usually displayed as a horizontal bar that fills up from left to right as the video plays. Most major video platforms like YouTube, Netflix, and Facebook include progress bars on their video players.
Progress bars serve multiple purposes. First, they allow users to easily see their current position in the video timeline. This helps if they want to skip ahead or rewind to a certain part. Second, progress bars give users a sense of progression and completion – seeing the bar gradually fill up can be satisfying. Finally, progress bars assist users if they want to stop watching and come back later – the bar will remember their spot.
Given these benefits, most video services have incorporated progress bars into their interfaces. They have become a standard feature that users expect to see. Platforms like YouTube and Netflix likely realized that adding progress bars improves the overall user experience for video streaming.
TikTok’s Auto-Play Design
TikTok is designed to keep users continuously watching videos through an auto-playing feature. As soon as one video ends, the next video will immediately start playing without any user action required. This auto-playing design aims to provide a seamless, endless feed of content.
According to an article on Creator Land, “TikTok automatically starts playing the next video without prompting the viewer to take any action. This feature is called the Auto-Scroll feature.” (source). The auto-play feature means users don’t need to manually select each video to watch; the platform does it for them.
TikTok’s product manager states that the auto-play feature “offers users a more immersive and entertaining experience as they scroll through content effortlessly” (source). This endless stream of auto-playing videos is carefully designed to keep users engaged on the platform.
Encouraging Passive Viewing
One of the main reasons TikTok does not show a progress bar is to encourage more passive viewing habits. Without a progress bar, users have no indicator of how much of a video they have watched or how much is left. This creates a seamless, endless stream of content that promotes passive watching (Montag, 2021).
Research has found that the lack of a progress bar contributes to users spending more time passively consuming videos without making active choices (Faltesek, 2023). There are no visual markers to prompt users to decide if they want to continue watching a particular video or move on to another. The auto-playing design results in many users getting stuck in a loop of endlessly scrolling and watching without intention.
Additionally, studies have shown the passive viewing encouraged by TikTok can lead to mindless consumption and decreased awareness of time spent on the app (The Paladin, 2023). Users can easily lose track of time as they watch video after video without the progress bar cues that might encourage more active engagement.
Influencing Viewing Behavior
One way TikTok influences viewing behavior is through its intentional lack of a progress bar. Most video apps like YouTube include a progress bar that shows users how much of a video they have watched and how much is left. But on TikTok, there is no indicator of video length or progress.
According to a study by Prnewswire, viewers are becoming more aware of how platforms influence their preferences. By removing the progress bar, TikTok creates an infinite, unquantified feed. Without knowing the length of each video, users are more likely to watch randomly and passively without defined stopping points. This encourages more aimless viewing behavior rather than intentional watching.
As explained in a TikTok for Business blog post, TikTok is designed for hands-free viewing. By eliminating the progress bar that marks logical stopping points, TikTok influences viewers to simply let the auto-playing feed continue versus consciously finishing each video. This infinite feed primes users to watch more passively.
Promoting Addictive Usage
Unlike other social media platforms, TikTok lacks typical progress metrics like view counts or likes that allow users to track the engagement and popularity of their content. As discussed in research by Qin (2022), this intentional design choice by TikTok removes “external influence and distraction” and allows users to focus entirely on consuming and engaging with the app’s auto-playing stream of videos.
Without signals of outward validation and growth, users on TikTok are incentivized to continue scrolling endlessly in search of those unpredictable moments of enjoyment when a video resonates with them. As the analysis by Petrillo (2021) found, this design promotes more passive and addictive viewing behaviors, as users are not distracted by monitoring performance metrics and are simply immersed in an “unending visual journey” designed by TikTok’s algorithms.
Ultimately, the lack of progress bars and view counts is a strategic choice by TikTok to boost addictive usage. By removing metrics that provide extrinsic motivation and measurable goals, TikTok refocuses its users’ motivation entirely inward, powering its auto-play feeds through intrinsically-rewarding experiences. This creates a potentially more compulsive user experience optimized to maximize time spent on the app.
Maximizing Video Views
One of the main reasons TikTok does not display progress bars is that it helps maximize video views. According to TikTok, their mission is to “inspire creativity and bring joy”. However, their key goal from a business perspective is to get users to watch as many videos as possible in order to sell more ads. By not showing progress bars, it encourages passive viewing where users simply let the videos continue playing without actively choosing to click and watch each one.
This auto-play, endless scroll design leads viewers to consume more content. As Kaylen Peterson notes, TikTok is designed to be addictive – making it easy to lose track of time as you continue watching video after video.
Without milestones showing your place in the content, there are less barriers to scrolling endlessly. This benefits TikTok by maximizing time spent in the app, video views, and subsequently ad revenue. However, it may diminish user control and encourage mindless viewing habits.
Advertising Benefits
TikTok’s auto-play design and lack of a progress bar promote increased passive viewing and higher video views. This benefits advertisers as it leads to more ad impressions and visibility. According to one source, the average clickthrough rate (CTR) for TikTok video ads is 0.89%, much higher than other platforms. The increased video completion rate means more ad exposures.
With its addictive scrolling and auto-play features, TikTok hooks users into staying on the app longer. People spend an average of 52 minutes per day on TikTok. The longer people are exposed to content, the more ads they see. As noted by this article, view rate and play rate are key advertising metrics on TikTok that help maximize ad visibility.
TikTok’s design priorities keeping people engaged on the platform over providing visibility into their viewing progress. This benefits advertisers, but comes at the cost of reduced transparency for users.
User Experience Tradeoffs
The lack of a progress bar on TikTok videos presents some tradeoffs for the user experience. On one hand, not having a progress bar helps promote more passive watching and gets users to scroll endlessly through videos without stopping to consider video length or progress. This benefits TikTok by maximizing video views and time spent on the app (LinkedIn).
However, the lack of a progress bar also means users don’t have as much control over their viewing experience. They can’t easily skip around in a longer video or gauge how much time is left. This makes it harder to find or re-watch a certain part of a video (UX Design).
Overall, TikTok seems to have prioritized simplistic and addictive scrolling over more control for users. The auto-play design tries to get users passively watching as many videos as possible. While this may frustrate some users who want more control, it does seem effective at keeping people engaged on the platform (Medium). There are valid arguments on both sides of this user experience tradeoff.
Conclusion
In summary, TikTok intentionally omits a progress bar to shape user behavior and serve business goals. The auto-play design replaces user control with an endless stream of videos determined by the algorithm. This encourages passive viewing without a clear endpoint, optimizing for addiction and video views. While it enhances TikTok’s advertising capabilities, it comes at the cost of user experience. The lack of a progress bar is a strategic choice to maximize engagement metrics, even if it means sacrificing user empowerment and digital wellbeing.
TikTok shapes your viewing experience and takes away a sense of control. The endless scroll entices you to keep watching without fully realizing it. While this benefits TikTok’s stats, it raises concerns about technology manipulating our time and attention. Understanding the thinking behind the progress bar’s absence provides perspective on how some platforms prioritize business over their users’ best interests.
