Why Are We So Addicted to Watching Other People’s Lives on TikTok?

JAKARTA – You open TikTok intending to watch for five minutes. An hour later, you are still scrolling through the daily lives of people you have never met. The attraction may not simply come from entertainment, but from the feeling that strangers on the screen have somehow become part of your routine.

The phenomenon has gained fresh academic attention through a new study of RushTok, a TikTok community surrounding sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama in the United States. Published on September 8, 2026, the study found that many viewers felt connected to the community despite not actually participating in the offline event.

Among 71 participants, 51 described RushTok as a community, while only 11 considered themselves actual members. Much of that connection centered on individual creators and potential new members, creating a form of one-sided emotional attention often associated with parasocial relationships.

RushTok is only one example. TikTok users routinely follow strangers through videos documenting university life, travel, relationships, family routines, careers and everyday activities.

TikTok’s For You recommendation system can strengthen that experience. The platform says recommendations are influenced by user interactions, accounts followed, comments, videos watched and information such as captions, sounds and hashtags. Completing a video can also serve as a strong signal of interest.

As users repeatedly engage with a particular type of content, the platform can continue serving similar videos. What begins as a random glimpse into someone else’s life can gradually become a digital series that viewers feel compelled to follow.

Pew Research Center’s 2026 survey of 1,458 U.S. teenagers also found that entertainment is a major reason for using TikTok, with roughly eight in 10 TikTok users citing it as a reason for being on the platform. Teenagers also use TikTok to keep up with celebrities, find information and connect with people who share their interests.

There is, however, another side to the endless stream. Pew found that TikTok users were more likely than Instagram or Snapchat users to say the platform negatively affects their sleep and productivity.

The fascination, then, may not simply be about watching videos.

It is about watching people.

We see their mornings, their struggles, their celebrations and their routines. We follow stories that were never written for us, yet somehow begin to feel familiar.

And perhaps that is the real reason strangers’ lives can become so difficult to stop watching.