TIKTOK MADE ME READ IT: Why I believe the “Brain-Rot App” will save books. (Lauren Fowler Blog Post #1)

 Where were you during the great TikTok shutdown of 2025? Eating dinner, when suddenly, you found yourself a content-less iPad adult? Or, using the facilities, when you suddenly found yourself reading the back of the shampoo bottle like it’s 2002 again? Did you panic about what you’ll do with your free (and, let’s be honest, not free) time, worry about the endless drafts you were terrified to post ceasing to exist, or maybe fret about moving over to Instagram Reels, knowing they’ll never quite measure up?

Or…you’re like me, and immediately panicked about the dear loss of BookTok.  

If you are like me, or the many library professionals and paraprofessionals who utilize BookTok in their daily lives, TikTok is not just about silly dances or trending audios. In the world of BookTok, it has become a lifeline—a stunningly vibrant example of what researcher and social media scholar dahna boyd calls a networked public. A networked public is more than an audience; it’s a community formed and sustained through technology. On BookTok, readers, hashtags like #BookTok or #LibraryTok collapse distance, letting a teen in Wyoming, a Librarian in New York, and an author in Spain share the same virtual reading circle. With duets, stitches, and comments, users can respond and remix, layering meaning and momentum until one simple video becomes a collective experience.

BookTok doesn’t just recommend books (that’s what we librarians are for), it makes them a cultural phenomena. A quick, passion-packed 30-second review can catapult even backlist titles into bestsellers or send library hold queues to a number higher than the amount of likes on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement post. Mentioned by this blog post on the influence of BookTok, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses did not just trend—they became social experiences, uniting strangers across the globe in a digital conversation (not to mention the glee in knowing you’ve read the same book as Cynthia Erivo). Just look at celebrity book clubs,

All of this matters against the backdrop of a sobering statistic: a recent New York Times article reports that from 2003 to 2023, the share of Americans reading for pleasure fell nearly 40 percent. FOURTY PERCENT. And yes, that time frame INCLUDES the time we were all locked inside of our houses, supposedly binge-reading stacks of books we panic-bought in March of 2020.

And yet, walk into a public library today, and you are likely to see a “Trending on BookTok” display. Some libraries, like Milwaukee Public Library, have even leaned into BookTok with viciously viral videos that promote inclusivity and intellectual freedom, proving that these networked publics don’t just live online but spill into our stacks, services, and conversations.

Which brings me back to the shutdown: maybe what scared me the most wasn’t losing TikTok itself but losing the community it created. The messy, joyful, book-loving community that has managed to keep reading alive.

So, what do you think—will BookTok remain the future of reading communities, or will the next shutdown leave us paging through shampoo bottles again?


--Lauren Fowler

Comments

  1. MsIvelisseSeptember 8, 2025 at 4:42 PM

    The pandemic showed us how important BookTok was when in-person clubs and library programs disappeared, it kept reading communities alive when we couldn’t gather. TikTok’s shutdown though, also shows how fragile it is to rely on one platform alone. The future of reading has to be bigger than a single app, rooted in multiple spaces, libraries, bookstores, and whatever comes next, so readers always have a place to find each other.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beth WolfSeptember 8, 2025 at 5:33 PM

    I remember exactly where I was when the great TikTok shutdown of 2025 happened...because I was on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean sea and had no idea it was happening because I don't pay for cruise ship internet! I came back into service and my friends were (probably justifiably) going nuts about it. It made me realize how much information we get from TikTok that I don't get otherwise: my friends share news of new menu items at various food places (like Dunkin and fast food); we get some of our most interesting and entertaining news updates including commentary from this app; we share TONS of cat videos back and forth. And in addition, I realized that TikTok is the main form of communication that I have with one of my sisters. She hates talking on the phone and she kind of stinks at texting back, but if I send her a funny video, she will always reply.

    I definitely agree that we need to have other platforms ready to go to pick up the slack if this happens again. Social media apps have and will rise and fall again and again (just this week in the class, we mentioned Six Degrees and I've never heard of that one. But there is also Friendster and MySpace that were mentioned and Vine that was not mentioned).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beth WolfSeptember 8, 2025 at 5:48 PM

    I also forgot to mention in my other comment one thing that I wanted to point out that I find really intriguing about BookTok is how authors are being discovered here. I thought about this today because I finished reading the newest novella, Fearful, in the Powerless series by Lauren Roberts. I have no idea if she would have been as popular and suggested if she wasn't popular on BookTok. Same as with Hannah Nicole Maehrer, the author of the Assistant to the Villain series. Both of these series are fantastic, by the way, and I highly recommend them.

    ReplyDelete

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