Senior Mag 2023: TikTokers share plans for the evolution of their social media personas

Sunny Huang unabashedly unfolds a brand new creased pride flag, camera shaking as she shares her excitement with hundreds of thousands of viewers on TikTok.

Sunny’s TikTok, which she created just before the pandemic, has accumulated roughly 650k likes across hundreds of videos. Sunny’s content mostly consists of fancams of K-pop artists mixed with songs performed with a kazoo, drawings she’s made and profile pictures requested by others.

“TikTok is really unique compared to other social media,” she said. “Because it’s so fast paced, it’s really easy to get lots of views.”

Sunny has reduced her volume of posting to the account — partially due to what she calls “maturing from [her] own content.” Though she eventually plans to create a new account purely dedicated to art, Sunny said that she has already fulfilled most of the funny ideas she wanted to share through TikTok. 

Another reason for posting less was her mother’s discovery of the account.

“A lot of the account was talking about my life and my feelings without having to worry about anyone in real life, especially my family,” Sunny said. “So when she found the account, it felt like a huge invasion of privacy — even though the account was public. Though in the end, it made a positive impact on my life, at the time I felt very anxious.”

Her most viral video remains a recording that she made of opening a pride flag, which seemed to resonate with many viewers, attracting excited comments from people all around the world.

“People were just being supportive of me and sharing their own experiences, which was honestly really sweet,” Sunny said. “Ultimately, I think people just want to feel a sense of belonging when they go on social media.”
Another Class of 2023 TikToker, Joanna Song, has built a following of nearly 80k, primarily with videos of her workouts that unexpectedly blew up after she started uploading them in her junior year. She hopes to be as much of an inspiration to others as others on social media were to her during her “confidence and self-improvement journey.”

“A lot of the content I create is just from me going to the gym, so it’s more of a lifestyle than doing something just to create content,” she said. “Most of my following are people who are like me — teenage girls who are interested in starting off going to the gym who look at my videos for inspiration on what workouts I do, what my daily life is like, or where motivation and discipline comes from.”

Though companies often send Joanna products to promote, she generally turns down promotions for ones she wouldn’t recommend or dislikes. Most of her income from social media comes from sponsors whose products she genuinely believes in.

“I know for sure that I don’t want it to be a full-time job because there’s so many other things I want to explore or do,” Joanna said. “I really dislike when people immediately make an assumption that because I have this amount of followers online, then I think I’m better than everyone else or something. I’m more for focusing on myself and what I can do to improve.”