TikTok: angoisse, solitude et exploration adolescente en temps de pandémie
TikTok: Anxiety, Loneliness and Teenage Exploration in Times of Pandemic

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to explore the creative practices of young people using the TikTok app in the context of the Covid pandemic which, since March 2020, has resulted in the deaths of millions of people around the world. Creative practices on Tiktok evolve according to a process of social mimicry. A model production is the source of hundreds of subsequent productions which are all original. We selected three popular productions during the pandemic to analyze them. Our analyze is based on the socio-anthropological approach which is a contemporary trend in comprehensive sociology. Our results highlight several initiatory themes that belong to the repertoire of great anthropological invariants such as loneliness, fear of death, anxiety about the future and identity ambivalence in adolescence. These are all themes which, we will discuss, touch on the tragic dimension of the human condition. In this article, we clarify in the first two parts the concepts of rite of passage, initiation and social mimicry that constitute our theoretical framework. Subsequently, in the third part, we present the criteria for choosing the selected productions, the inclusion of our analysis in comprehensive sociology and the description of the productions. Our analysis of the three productions, which can be found in the fourth part, shows that social mimicry, at the source of the productions on TikTok, offers young people a creative space for identity building and socialization with peers. Finally, TikTok can be seen as an adolescent place of experimentation with the great invariants of the human condition.

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