With the dramatic rise of TikTok’s popularity, its features and trends have allowed for new, innovative of preserving memories in the digital age.
Many people have memories as a child of decorating and cutting pictures for scrapbooks, taping them onto construction paper and then placing them into the thin plastic pocket pages. Nowadays, instead of opting for a traditional method to preserve memories and keep track of progress in their personal and professional lives, many people are turning towards a more convenient method. In a more digital age, where millions of people are making memories through their phone cameras, a new alternative to scrapbooking has come to life. With the presence of social media platforms, many people are sharing their lives online, long-time followers the ability to continually watch them grow over the course of their life, the same way that someone would look back at their family photos in a scrapbook page. But what makes platforms like TikTok a new way to look back at one’s progress and milestones?
On TikTok, transitions are used to seamlessly merge two different video clips together. So when many viral audios become popular on TikTok to put over videos, many people mimic the origin video’s formatting that merges a video clip from at the start of either one period of time/goal to a video clip at the end of said period time/goal. These TikTok videos are paired with different sounds, which are usually popular audios that trend on TikTok, such as clips from shows, films and songs. When used properly, they’re able to tell a story and show the progress of one’s actions.
For example, a popular audio on TikTok originated from Disney’s A.N.T Farm, which stated, “Finally, finished with all my homeworkI don’t know what I learned, but I know I’m done learnin’!” This audio became widely popular among students graduating with various types of degrees on TikTok. For the transition, students would record a clip of them before graduation closing their laptops; afterwards, the person in the video would transition and change into their graduation robes, cap, tassels and stoles that they would wear to their graduation.
Another example of this is the audio from a song called “Where’d All The Time Go” by Dr. Dog. The song describes a feeling of nostalgia when one realizes how much has changed after a long period. The audio used stretches from the intro of the song to the first two lines of the first verse, “Where’d all the time go, starting to fly.” Many people doing this trend would record the first part of the video in their comfort then record the last half of the video glammed up on, holding a cake and blowing the candle out.
Along with these first two examples, another one, “And with that, the 2023 season comes to an endGoodnight,” became popular after TikTok’s Sportscaster (@sammylevit) posted a recording of him announcing the end of the 2023 season the same way he would announce the end of the season of a sports game. The audio would also be mixed with “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay. It has trended in January for the last three years, withTikTok users condensed compilations to reminisce on their year in 2023.
Trends reflect on the nostalgia of users’ lives while also relating to many pop culture trends. This causes users to connect to familiar sounds and songs to encapsulate their experiences. The brevity of TikTok videos lends itself well to these experiences, allowing users to share a year’s worth of memories into short and concise narratives.
It is clear that many people believe that there is a certain beauty in tracking your own progress and growth through videos. It is more interactive and flexible than analog media. For one, taking a photo and putting it into a scrapbook is limiting with the capacity on how you can change those photos in that moment. By tracking memories through videos, this offers the flexibility to add things like music, filters or stickers. To capture more of how you’re feeling in that moment. Being able to proudly share this progress on social media can also help inspire others to start goals that they don’t believe that they can achieve themselves. When posting these trends, it can inspire collective improvement.
Trends like this can potentially replace the classic act of scrapbooking because, if for some reason a scrapbook gets lost or damaged, there is always a digital footprint one has access to in case a physical copy has disappeared. Also, there is a potential to become monetized on TikTok, which can make people want to share their lives through vlogging. However, while many people have found solace in sharing positive goals to document and share online, there are some downsides. When sharing a journey online, many people can criticize you and discourage you from achieving your goals.
Traditional scrapbooking, by comparison, can be a more personal project, one you only share with close family and friends. From this perspective, TikTok can be a more affordable platform to preserve memories and share milestones, the classic art of scrapbooking feels more intimate and personal compared to sharing videos online. Scrapbooking can become more unique and personalized compared to copying a video format that millions of other people have used. Along with that, a scrapbook can become a family heirloom that can be passed down for generations, unlike a TikTok post, which can be in jeopardy if the platform decides to shut down in the future the same way that the video platform Vine has.
While none of these methods involve the classic act of cutting out pictures or placing stickers on construction paper, this new and modern way of preserving memories makes the experience of looking back feel more immersive and nostalgic.
Digital products offer endless possibilities to those who craft these narratives on TikTok; its various editing softwares gives users the flexibility to add many digital effects such as filters, overlays and graphics to enhance their videos and audio recordings, giving them a personalized touch to their videos. In this era of digital and video scrapbooking, it is clear that the nature of storytelling has changed from the traditional paper scrapbook. Regardless of how we choose to preserve our memories and progress, humanity will always continue to chase a sense of nostalgia.
