Ok folks, my first TikTok video had 947 views. I’m told that is pretty good, and coming from my teenagers, it must be true! That is not why I’m writing this post though.
Our school had a talent show yesterday. We had about 1/3 of our students sign up to perform. They were all nervous, and excited. When it came time for the show, the students BLEW MY SOCKS OFF! I expected some of them to do well, but seriously, I was left speechless at some of the performances. Now, we’re talking kids all between the age of grade 2 to grade 6. When they signed up saying they were going to hula hoop or dance, I expected some cute performances. Dudes, these performances were next level.
The hula hooper not only hula hooped (which I cannot do at all), she did a whole choreographed dance while hula hooping. She was doing the Macarena while hula hooping for gosh sake! The 3 dancers practiced for weeks and choreographed their own hiphop dance. The student that said she would solve a Rubik’s cube not only solved it in under 2 minutes (again, I have no clue), but also danced while doing it. The student that was doing the moonwalk also had a whole choreographed dance and I seriously thought it was Michael Jackson up there performing. The whole school was flying high from this spectacle of talents.
When telling my husband about it last night, it dawned on me; these are TikTok kids! Every day, for hours on end some of them, they are watching people perform in videos on TikTok or Youtube. They know what’s up. If you want to get “likes” you need to step up your game and put on a show. I don’t think most of them even realize the correlation between what they did yesterday and their online hobbies and habits. They stepped up their game and then some yesterday. They had the whole school vibrating. Even the ones who’s talents were, let’s say, minimal, the confidence they had up there was huge. Yesterday I got to see first hand how the media can have some really positive influences on our kids. It was so much fun, the principal told me we had to organize another one for June.
This is so great to hear about, Leah! I had never considered how the TikTok age could affect kids’ performance skills, but this makes total sense. TikTok is such a creative platform that has a lot of cool art on it – singing, dancing, painting, etc. I love that you point out the benefits of social media use, as it usually gets dragged for being a negative influence on kids’ lives. What a refreshing perspective!
Thanks for sharing! I too never thought about how TikTok could be used in a good way to help kiddos with performance and creative skills. I know kiddos always follow dances and learn through them, but I never thought of it in such a constructive way before. Thanks for sharing, and helping me shift my perspective on TikTok and some of the benefits of it!
That’s incredible! It is so exciting to see our students doing what they love to do. Whether they are practicing for an organized sport/activity or performing for themselves in their own living room, these kids put hours of time into doing what they love! Tiktok and Youtube has brought some kids out of their shell and the whole internet is their audience instead of just their friends and family.
I’ve always loved school talent shows- especially at an elementary level! I feel like the kids always blow you away and it’s way better than what you are expecting. Plus they are usually little and extra cute which never hurts.