When teenagers are bored the first thing they do is resort to  their phones. Teens used to spend time quietly scrolling through Instagram or Snapchat, but the newest social media craze is more active and social.  Tik Tok is being used widespread by students at Parkway Central. Tik Tok came out in September 2017, but has become a lot more popular recently.

“TikTok, the short-form video app popular among Gen Z and best known for its viral dance challenges, is the No. 1 entertainment app on Apple’s App Store,” according to an article by Kerry Flynn of CNN business.

Tik Tok is different than your typical social media platforms because it allows a lot of creativity with the type of videos you are creating. Tik Tok allows users to be more social and group based than other social media networks.

“It definitely counts as a social media,” sophomore Aidan Shelledy said. “It’s kinda scary how popular it is because if someone starts playing a sound, everyone will recognize and sing along with it.”

In the halls,  students are going viral on Tik Tok and growing their following. Senior Matt Mendel has been creating Tik Toks since 2018, but his number ogffollowers jumped at the beginning of January when he made his second account.

Mendel created the account @realmissourihypehouse account, which now has 20.8K followers. Mendel’s personal account has 2773 followers.

“I started that for fun to see if I could get any more followers on a second account and then my first video posted got 150,000 views,” Mendel said.

After the first video he posted on his second account got a lot of views he posted a second video that got even more views. It was after that when Mendel decided that he would start choosing random people who comment to join, which is the idea of the hype house.

This idea was based off of the popular group named The Hype House which is based in Los Angeles includes some of the most popular Tik Tok influencers: Charlie D’amelio and Chase Hudson otherwise known as, Lilhuddy.

The Real Missouri Hype House has a special process of picking out who they think would be a good representative for Missouri on Tik Tok. The people who are in the Real Missouri Hype House also plan get-togethers so they can come together, hang out, and make Tik Toks.

“Now that we have more people it is easier to filter through, so we go through all the comments and see who is following and who isn’t and we go to instagram and see who is following us there. Whoever has DMed us first is who ever we look at first,” Mendel said.

Senior Ella Hayek had a little different experience than Mendel. Hayek has used Tik Tok since this summer, but it started out not serious at all. Recently she had a video get 155.3K likes.

“The one that got famous was me and Sophia were thinking of things we could do and so we just had the idea,” Hayek said.

The video that Hayek got a lot of views on was when she posted a Snapchat story where her friends could suggest different dare ideas for her and her friends to do. The original intent was just them hanging out at night having fun, but in the end Hayek thought she should make a Tik Tok. Hayek gained followers from the video.

“[I now have] 1,550 followers but like last weekend I had 34,” Hayek said.