How did you pick a college: the academics, the cost, the campus? For today鈥檚 high schoolers, a new metric has entered the chat鈥攈ow the college will look on TikTok.
According to Teen Vogue, high school TikTok influencers are increasingly choosing schools based on how they鈥檒l present on social media content. 鈥淧art of Morgan McGuire鈥檚 calculation as she鈥檚 deciding where to go to college is what will look good on TikTok,鈥 writes journalist Fortesa Latifi. 鈥淪he wants to make sure the campus is pretty and that there are fun events like football games to document in bite-size videos.鈥 For these students who have built followings online, selecting a college is about more than education. It鈥檚 a strategic career move.
It鈥檚 hardly surprising given how much of teens鈥 lives are now lived online. TikTok ranks among the most popular social platforms, with Pew Research鈥檚 2023 data revealing it鈥檚 the second most-used app among those ages 13 to 17 (YouTube takes the top spot). One in five teens say they鈥檙e on TikTok 鈥渁lmost constantly,鈥 with college-related content becoming a major genre on both TikTok and YouTube. On TikTok alone, there are more than 8.3 million posts tagged with #college, alongside thousands more under hashtags like #dorm and #backtoschool. These platforms now serve as unofficial guides to higher education, where creators offer everything from college-decision reveals to insider tips鈥攁nd make money doing it.
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