Why is TikTok not used in China?
TikTok: How attention is programmed in the digital age
TikTok is a short-video platform owned by ByteDance Ltd., a technology company founded in 2012 in Beijing, China by Zhang Yiming. Although it operates globally, ByteDance maintains a strategic link with the Chinese government, which since 2019 has owned what is known as a “golden share”: a symbolic stake (1%) that grants it veto power over key decisions related to content and algorithms. This structure allows the State to maintain influence over sensitive sectors without directly controlling the companies.
Before its international launch, ByteDance developed the original version of the app under the name Douyin, designed exclusively for the Chinese market. It was launched in 2016, and due to its success, the company created a parallel version for the rest of the world: TikTok, which debuted in 2017 after the acquisition and integration of the American app Musical.ly.
Since then, TikTok has experienced explosive growth. In 2018, it had around 350 million monthly active users, and by 2020, it had already exceeded 1 billion, with an average annual growth of over 70%. By 2025, the platform is approaching 2 billion active users, consolidating itself as one of the most influential applications in the global digital ecosystem.
Regarding daily use, it is estimated that users spend between 60 and 90 minutes per day on the app. Given that videos last between 15 and 60 seconds, it is estimated that an average user consumes between 60 and 100 videos daily, depending on the type of content and browsing pace. A fast, intense, and hard-to-pause dynamic.
What is Douyin?
TikTok and Douyin —its Chinese version— are developed by the same company, ByteDance Ltd., but function as separate products. Douyin operates exclusively in China and is regulated by local legislation, while TikTok is designed for the rest of the world. This division reflects the digital control policies imposed by the Chinese government, with a special emphasis on child protection.
In this context, Douyin applies a set of mandatory restrictions for underage users, which strongly contrast with TikTok's permissive approach in other regions. These measures include:
Strict time limit: minors can only use Douyin between 6:00 AM and 10:00 PM, to avoid interfering with sleep hours. Outside this range, the app automatically blocks.
Maximum usage time: access is limited to 40 minutes per day, in order to prevent compulsive use and preserve time for study, rest, and active play.
Mandatory youth mode: all users under 14 automatically access an environment with educational, cultural, and scientific content. Videos of museums, history, science, or art replace viral challenges and light entertainment.
No live streams or comments: minors cannot participate in lives or leave comments, to limit public exposure and protect their privacy.
Identity verification: a real phone number and cross-referencing with official records are required to prevent age falsification.
These measures reflect that, although TikTok and Douyin share origin and technological structure, they function as two clearly distinct platforms in terms of limits and content. This difference becomes even more pronounced when it comes to use by minors, where Douyin imposes strict restrictions that radically contrast with TikTok's free and unregulated operation in other countries.
The dopaminergic imbalance
The logic of TikTok —and other similar platforms— is based on offering a constant sequence of short, highly stimulating videos. In a daily session, users can consume between 60 and 100 videos, ranging from jokes, viral challenges, and striking dances to sexually suggestive content, absurd scenes, moderate violence, or surprises designed to provoke an immediate reaction. It is a bombardment of micro-stimuli that keeps attention captive and feeds a continuous consumption dynamic.
This dynamic repeatedly stimulates the brain's dopaminergic system. Unlike the popular idea that directly associates it with pleasure, dopamine is not the “pleasure molecule,” but rather of anticipatory desire: it is the neurotransmitter that prepares the organism for a potential reward. It is activated not when something is obtained, but when something seems to promise gratification, even if it has not yet occurred. This anticipation is what keeps the subject moving, expectant, oriented towards a possible achievement or satisfaction.
This function is fundamental in activities such as studying, art, problem-solving, or deep learning: there, the reward is not immediate, but the expectation of achieving it in the long term keeps the system motivated.
However, the same circuit is also activated in the face of trivial stimuli, as long as they manage to hint at a forthcoming reward. On platforms like TikTok, what generates dopamine release is not so much the current video, but the expectation of what the next one will be like: funnier, more impactful, more attractive. This constant promise of something better in the next scroll keeps attention captive, even when the content being viewed is not particularly memorable. Thus, a state of active waiting is established, in which the subject does not desire something concrete, but simply expects to be stimulated again and again.
The problem arises when this circuit, designed to sustain desire over time, becomes saturated by brief, trivial, and continuous stimuli. The brain gets used to receiving small doses of anticipation and micro-gratification without effort, without elaboration, without delay. This establishes a pattern of immediate gratification, which displaces the ability to sustain attention, develop an interest, or build desire consistently.
As this mechanism consolidates, this process generates what we could call an inflation of stimuli: the more consumed, the harder it is for something to have an effect. The threshold for something to be interesting is artificially raised. Everyday activities —reading, conversing, cooking, studying, playing without screens— begin to seem insufficient, slow, boring, or meaningless. Attention is fragmented, desire is impoverished, and boredom becomes unbearable.
Now, when thinking about this imbalance, it is often assumed that an adult has the capacity to “return” to a previous, more balanced state. The idea is that, having grown up at a different pace, in a different environment, with different modes of attention, they could recognize the change and correct course. And that, in many cases, is true. There are adults who can retrain their attention, reconstruct their desire, regain the ability to maintain interest without the need for immediate stimuli. But this possibility depends on whether they have ever had sustained quality experiences: having read with pleasure, having played without prefabricated stimuli, having sustained a conversation without distractions, having learned something difficult over time.
The problem is that not all adults have that starting point. Many also grew up in environments saturated with fast stimuli: TV on all day, absence of family structure, emotional precariousness, fragmented schooling, zapping culture. For them, the return to a “healthier” state may not exist as a prior experience. In that sense, dopaminergic imbalance is not just an individual or generational problem, but also structural.
The most critical difference occurs in those who are still forming their brains, their way of desiring, and their way of being in the world. A child or adolescent who builds their connection with stimuli through immediate gratification from the beginning has no other reference model. For them, infinite scrolling is not a distortion, but the norm: the starting point from which everything else is interpreted. It is not about having lost something richer and more elaborate, but about never having known it.
In these cases, thinking that the child's brain will simply “recalibrate” over time is a risky assumption. If there are no prior experiences of sustained attention, creative boredom, free play, delayed desire, or learning through effort, the quick response circuit can consolidate as the only possible form of relationship with the environment. And that not only compromises the ability to concentrate, but also the construction of desire, waiting, tolerance to emptiness, and the possibility of projecting into the future with depth and meaning.
However, this situation is not definitive. It is not about the inevitable condemnation of a generation, but about the urgent challenge of offering them other forms of experience, other ways of inhabiting time and relating to the world. The possible path involves creating contexts where desire is not consumed instantly, where there is space for pause, waiting, the slow elaboration of interest. It is, ultimately, about reintroducing density into everyday experience: reading, conversation, art, nature, silence, presence. Only then will it be possible to build an alternative framework that is not colonized by the urgency of the immediate.
It is important to understand that the platform does not impose a culture, but rather reflects and enhances what is already circulating. It functions as an amplifier: it organizes, accelerates, and overemphasizes the content that a society produces and values. In the West, this often translates into hyperstimulation, exhibitionism, and constant gratification. But when a regulatory framework is introduced —as in the case of the Chinese version for minors—, the same tool can become an environment of containment and guidance. It is not just about limiting, but about safeguarding the space where desire and attention can still form. In that sense, the imposed restrictions do not seek to repress, but to protect something that, without intervention, could be lost before it develops: the capacity to construct meaning beyond the immediate.