Starting from its launch in China in 2016 as Douyin, the social media TikTok has become a worldwide success. According to a statistical report conducted in January 2022, TikTok is available in over 150 countries and 75 different languages and is the fastest growing social media application worldwide (Southern, 2021; TikTok Statistics, 2022).

Such a phenomenon, as expected, has given rise to a huge scientific literature, spanning from medical studies to sociology, from psychology to communication, from computer studies to anthropology. Within the boundaries of educational studies, scholarship has primarily focused on questions of TikTok usefulness—or lack thereof—to share specific learning contents (Escamilla-Fajardo, Alguagil, Lopéz-Carrill, 2021; Lee, 2022; Rach and Lounis, 2020), while the peculiar phenomenology of TikTok engagement remains, at least to my knowledge, still unaddressed. In this paper, I attempt to fill the gap by going deep in the phenomenology of engagement TikTok arouses, thus attempting to sketch out some educational remarks about experience, time, and attention in education. Specifically, I shall ask a) which kind of temporality and attention is constituted through this social media, b) which kind of experience girls and boys undergo when being-in-TikTok, and c) which the role of education may be when dealing with TikTok engagement. Central to my analysis is Stiegler’s insight that “technics, far from being merely in time, properly constitutes time.” (1998/1994, 27)

And here we come to TikTok specific temporality. The continuity between past, present and future which one is supposed to maintain when paying attention and dealing with others and things is, conversely, continuously disrupted when being-in-TikTok. The user, given the functioning of the platform, has no memory of videos being watched, nor expectations about videos to come are being formed. With its continuous change of fast-paced videos one has no time to feel and appreciate—let alone reflecting on—the emotions elicited by a video that the subsequent one has already started. While being-in-TikTok the subject has no need to act and think, while the relationship with one’s emotions and feelings is left aside, too, interrupted again and again by the flow of videos.

In this way TikTok, I argue, creates a peculiar temporality, one that momentarily erases both past and future—thus erasing, at the very same time, the weight of memory and the task and burden of future projecting. It is a kind of uniform, suspended time, with no pause, no hollow, no change in speed. When being-in-TikTok both one’s projecting and one’s “being-together-with things at hand” (Heidegger, 1996/1927, 374) are suspended, deferred to a time and space yet to come.

However, while, drawing from Stiegler’s analysis of new social media, it may be tempting to label TikTok as a threat to anything of value “the family, the school, the totality of teaching and cultural institutions” (2010a, 184) can produce, I believe something more is going on here. This is so not because TikTok—or others social media, for that matter—cannot be a threat—indeed, they can. Rather, this is so for a) we have to make sense of how TikTok works, in order to understand and deal with such a potential harmfulness and threat; and b) TikTok is not just harmful; being-in-TikTok also involves a rupture of temporality which is worth analysing educationally.

My attempt is a conceptual one and is phenomenologically developed. Specifically, I shall ask which kind of temporality and attention is constituted through this social media, and which kind of experience girls and boys undergo when being-in-TikTok. To pursue my attempt, I shall draw on a number of sources. Specifically, in the first step, I focus on the phenomenology of being-in-TikTok drawing from a) Augustine discussion of time as memory, direct experience and expectation (2004/397); b) Heideggerian questions of “projecting” and “making present” (1996/1927); and c) Stiegler’s conception of technics and attention (1998/1994; 2010). In the second step, with the help of Dewey and his analysis of the relationship between knowledge and experience(1917; 1929/1925), I put forth the educational import of the sheer, radical undergoing TikTok induces. In the third section, by drawing from a rather underestimated Heideggerian essay—The Concept of Time—and current educational literature, I attempt to develop some further remarks about the relationship between suspension, experience and education.

Given this background, in my proposal I shall ask what is—if any—the educational import of the suspended, deferred temporality TikTok creates. The conclusions I draw are twofold. On the one hand, I argue that when being-in-TikTok one’s attention is captured in a flow, which erases any past—and any future as well. The temporality created, then, is that of a continuous consumption of a series of videos, which cut any possible connection with past feelings and future projections. TikTok, in a sense, freezes the time and all that comes with time: change—and with change uncertainty—the need for decision—and with decision responsibility—movement—and with movement risk. The subject has no need to act and think, while the relationship with one’s emotions and feelings is left aside, too, interrupted again and again by the flow of videos. However, on the other hand, being-in-TikTok is not just this. Along with the analysis of the sheer undergoing TikTok produces, in this proposal I attempt to also develop a tentative hypothesis: the swinging from the state of suspension and coming back to the world TikTok produces may allow us to see a phenomenon that is in and of itself educational, namely, being suspended from familiar, accustomed patterns of understandings, thus making room for moments of disclosure which seem irreducible to current educational mainstream, and yet are essential for education to happen (Conroy, 2004; Todd, 2014). It is exactly such a suspension which may allow for a different sensitivity, a fresh look over others and things. When returning to the world, the subject is more porous, vulnerable, if you wish, exposed to others and things. In a sense, when coming back to the world, one is offered the conditions by which to begin anew, to look at things with fresh eyes.

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