The TikTok Economy: How Media Platforms Are Reshaping Labor, Culture, and Influence (Final Project)
Intro
The rise of TikTok has redefined the boundaries between entertainment, entrepreneurship, and employment. What began as a short-form video app has evolved into a powerful media platform that drives consumer behavior, influences cultural norms, and creates new economic opportunities for everyday users. My project, which takes the form of a TikTok-style video, explores how the “TikTok economy” has emerged as a critical lens for understanding how media platforms can reshape labor, visibility, and success in modern society.
Alix Earle (Influencer)
To open the video, I present a montage of a creator who's gone viral overnight. Young entrepreneurs promoting their businesses, influencers landing brand deals, and individuals like Alix Earle gaining celebrity status. This serves as a compelling hook and introduces the theme of rapid, algorithm-driven success. Alix Earle, became a household name through her relatable “Get Ready With Me” videos, which led to brand deals worth tens of thousands of dollars. According to Page Six, “Earle reportedly earns six figures for a single Instagram story” (Bitsky, 2025). Her trajectory illustrates how TikTok enables creators to bypass traditional media gatekeeping and tap directly into consumer culture.
Tik Tok Doc
Despite being a high-earning medical professional, one female OB/GYN recently revealed that her TikTok content has become more profitable than her clinical work. By consistently posting health education videos and engaging with followers, she has successfully tapped into the Creator Fund and sponsorships. By 2024, her TikTok earnings surpassed her physician salary, which exceeded $300,000 annually. As she put it, “by 2024 I’d already made what I make in a full year as a physician.” This example vividly illustrates how TikTok isn't just a platform for entertainment, it’s a serious economic player, capable of reinventing traditional career trajectories and amplifying new forms of digital labor.
Tik Tok Disparities
However, as the video quickly pivots to show, not everyone benefited equally from the TikTok economy. While some creators go viral and build lucrative careers, others face significant challenges. The platform’s algorithm can both elevate and suppress content in ways that are often invisible and unaccountable. Research from ACM Digital Library (2025) highlights that “content creators with marginalized identities are disproportionately affected by shadowbanning…leading them to have to perform different types of invisible labor to circumvent it.” For instance, Black, LGBTQ+, and plus-size creators have shared experiences of being demonetized or having their content buried despite following community guidelines.
Data
This disparity exposes a critical flaw in what appears to be a democratized media system. Instead of an equal-opportunity platform, TikTok functions as an attention economy where visibility equals value and marginalized communities often face systemic disadvantages. As one creator put it in a 2025 interview-based study, “I had to dial back my posts. No one was seeing them anymore.” These creators are forced to navigate an exhausting cycle of self-censorship, content tweaking, and community building just to maintain a sliver of visibility and economic viability.
To highlight the scope of financial impact, I included data on creator earnings. While superstar influencers may earn upwards of $100,000 per post (Tubefilter, 2025), the majority of creators earn far less. According to recent data from ZipRecruiter and NeoReach, nearly 48% of TikTok creators make under $15,000 per year, and only about 6% earn over $100,000. This sharp contrast reveals that success on TikTok is not just about effort or talent. It's also about platform favoritism, algorithmic bias, and branding.
Conclusion
But the platform's influence isn't limited to commerce. TikTok also shapes beauty standards, political discourse, humor, and even career paths. This mirrors the central idea in media studies that media and culture have a two-way relationship. As TikTok users shape content, that content, in turn, shapes societal values and behaviors. The platform has, in effect, created a new kind of “digital labor”, one that is informal, precarious, and deeply tied to identity and visibility. Ultimately, the TikTok economy illustrates how media platforms can both empower and exclude. It reflects broader societal issues around access, visibility, labor, and cultural representation. By looking at who is seen, who is silenced, and who is paid, we gain a deeper understanding of how modern media shapes not just entertainment, but our economy and culture, too.
Bitsky, Leah. “Alix Earle’s Whopping 6-Figure Payday for a Single Instagram Story Revealed.” Page Six, 28 Apr. 2025. https://pagesix.com
Earle, A. [@alixearle]. (2023, May 15). The ending has me emotional .. #umiami #graduation [Video]. TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@alixearle/video/7232405699043544363
E! Entertainment [@e_entertainment]. (2023, March). Get Ready with Me: Alix Earle's Glamorous Look for the Grammys [Video]. TikTok. https://www.tiktok.com/@e_entertainment/video/7331925383148850474
Hale, James. “TikTok Pushes Its American Economy Importance with $1 Million in Free Ads for Small Businesses.” Tubefilter, 9 May 2025. https://tubefilter.com
ACM Digital Library. “Dialing It Back: Shadowbanning and the Invisible Labor of Marginalized Creators on TikTok.” 2025.
NeoReach & ZipRecruiter, “Creator Earnings Report 2025.”
ABC Action News. “TikTok Celebrates Small Business Month by Spotlighting Entrepreneurs.” WFTS, 15 May 2025
Spencer Barbosa. (2024, October [assuming month]). GREECE TRAVEL VLOG (benefit cosmetics brand trip) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtmLr2BufMc
Murphy, K. (2024, May 22). I’m a full-time doctor but I tripled my income with a TikTok side hustle – I made my entire yearly salary in just months. The U.S. Sun. https://www.the-sun.com/money/14408555/full-time-doctor-tiktok-side-hustle/
Mayworm, S., DeVito, M. A., Delmonaco, D., Thach, H., & Haimson, O. L. (2025). Taming TikTok: How BIPOC individuals perceive and interact with algorithmic bias. Publicera. https://publicera.kb.se/ir/article/view/47089
HUGE pr package unboxing haul insane. (2024, October). YouTube. https://youtu.be/34baSvZGjZs youtube.com
The Man Throws Up Money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cptuqCecf7E
Jubilee. (2024, December 9). Which influencer makes the most money? | Ranking [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6nzpiNFue0
Comments
Post a Comment