Does BookTok help readers, or does it reduce the act of reading to nothing but following shallow trends? #BookTok is a community on the app, that promotes reading, books, and literature. It’s similar to subreddit on Reddit. Over the past few years, it has led countless readers to engage superficially with literature.
Many factors, such as encouraging readers to read “trendy” romance and fantasy novels instead of literature with merit, are to blame for this.
This trend-centric reading culture that appeared on TikTok has made readers want to get their hands on the latest viral books promoted by dozens of creators. For example, books like It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover and Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas have gained massive popularity not necessarily because of their literary merit but because they fit the platform’s rapid and engaging style. Books like these get noticed, while more diverse and nuanced books get overshadowed because they don’t fit current trends.
The books that get the most buzz are the easily consumable ones, meaning they are simple to read and digest. So readers can just check them off the list rather than reflect, analyze, and engage more deeply with the book. This TikTok trend culture pressures readers to get and finish the “must-reads” even if they aren’t necessarily interested in the book. The app’s fast engagement style pushes out more trendy books every day, which causes another problem, overconsumption.
The excessive consumption of books, much like fast fashion, has rapidly risen due to how books are promoted on TikTok. The prioritization of quantity over quality has been a huge problem. Just as fast fashion promotion of cheap and trendy clothes affects the current climate, so does the overconsumption of books. The demand for new books leads to a higher consumption of paper, which contributes to deforestation and biodiversity loss.
The desire for social belonging often leads to both overconsumption of books and fast fashion. These behaviors stem from a consumerist mindset, which prioritizes the purchase and ownership of items that are often unnecessary. This distracts people from having deeper insights and connections that books can offer. With that, this phenomenon reflects our society’s desire for constant freshness.
Only by cultivating mindful reading habits can the book community solve this problem. Instead of focusing on the quantity of books people possess, they should focus on the quality. Readers should learn to challenge themselves and learn to combat the pressure to consume books simply because of their popularity.
