TikTok’s Rise as InfoTool

Despite the ubiquity of social media, people rarely associate it with learning. Whether Twitter or TikTok, people typically view social media as a way to catch up on the latest celebrity gossip or memes.

But in emerging countries like Brazil and India, social media platforms have been widely adopted for remote learning, especially during the pandemic. Indeed, some now argue that social media is one of the most effective tools to educate learners both young and old.

This debate isn’t academic or some sort of online flaming. The world runs on a knowledge economy and just about everyone needs to constantly pursue education to keep up. While ed tech innovators have made clear gains in learning with platforms like Khan Academy, few have achieved the unparalleled power of engagement of learning via social media.

Part of the power of social media as a learning platform is that it’s everywhere. In Brazil, WhatsApp is installed on 99% of smartphones and the app works even on very basic phones and prepaid plans without credit. No comparable platform exists in terms of accessibility and reach, which highlights its unique potential for training deskless workers who have limited digital literacy and work in remote locations.

What’s more, social media platforms are highly interactive. Users can exchange lots of content easily. This enables very active forms of learning, particularly in contrast to most in-person classrooms where many learners remain passive and silent. Many smart educators already know this, and they are leveraging social media platforms for a wide range of practice and peer learning activities as well as group motivation. Many college professors, for instance, now have their own chat groups.

There’s another reason that social media can benefit learning: They’re intelligent, and most social media platforms use sophisticated artificial intelligence to match content with users, akin to personalized learning.  In this sense, content is delivered in nano formats optimized for human consumption and enriched with community interaction. The entire experience is optimized for preferred human behavior, and this is exactly what learning platforms should — and often can — do.

People who create learning experiences should take this advice to heart, and employee training videos would be far more effective if their creators followed shorter formats popularized by TikTok and Instagram. Training materials can also serve as marketing materials, and lessons that are not confidential should be packaged as social media nuggets to attract and engage future hires.

At ChatClass, the company that I founded, we focus on building a conversational learning platform on top of WhatsApp and Instagram.  We are teaching English via Whatsapp, using AI powered chatbots and voice messaging to help students speak English even where there are no teachers that do. To date we have reached over 500,000 Brazilian students, many in favelas and rural and remote regions like Amazonas.

To be sure, social media use can be distracting. Some experts even believe social media is addictive. However, push notifications are equally distracting when learning happens on other platforms or even away from the device.  Managing distractions while learning is a general challenge, not unique to learning on social media.

In the end, societies face a massive global challenge of education. Upskilling workers, on the job training, 21st century skills for students and children – on all fronts people need more education, so it has to be cheaper, better, reach everywhere and be effective and efficient at scale. Social media provides the answer. So, call it what you want from WhatsEducation to InstaLearning, but social media is the future of education.

Jan Krutzinna is the founder of ChatClass, an artificial intelligence platform to develop people and support businesses through Instagram and WhatsApp. He worked at the United Nations in New York and co-authored a report for the Secretary-General on entrepreneurship in developing countries, and also worked as a manager at McKinsey & Company in New York and São Paulo. Jan grew up in rural Germany and graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Computer Science and Psychology and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.