Abstract
Background
Physical constraints of small apartment kitchens and the influence of the surrounding community food environment may impact food practices of apartment residents. Social media portrayal of these features may influence public perception of apartment living.
Aim
This project aimed to describe the public depiction of small apartment kitchen and cooking facilities.
Methods
Content analysis of TikTok videos posted with small apartment-related hashtags was determined the portrayal of kitchen facilities, residents’ food practices, and hypothesised barriers to healthy cooking and eating practices. Current residents of small apartments compared these video depictions to their own experience.
Results
We found TikTok videos rarely showed food practices (cooking, shopping and eating), kitchen size and function were usually portrayed with a positive or neutral sentiment, and that overall the depiction did not match current apartment residents’ lived experience.
Conclusion
Popular TikTok videos of small apartment kitchens present a glamorised view of microapartment living.
Introduction
With continuing increases in global population, and urbanisation concentrated in larger cities, higher density living is becoming more prevalent. Limited research with apartment residents indicates that their food expenditure patterns differ to that of their neighbours in lower density, detached or semi-detached housing, as high-rise apartment residents spend a larger proportion of their weekly household budget on eating foods prepared out of the home (Oostenbach et al., 2021). This is concerning given meals prepared outside the home tend to be of lower diet quality (Kant et al., 2015) and are associated with higher body weight (Moyeda-Carabaza et al., 2021). The propensity of apartment residents to eat less home-prepared foods may also be linked to the physical constraints of apartment kitchens such as size, storage, and limited appliances (Dunn et al., 2023; Nethercote and Horne, 2016). The compact design of very small studio units colloquially known as ‘microapartments’ (Gronostajska and Szczegielniak, 2021) encourages the omission or downsize of non-essential kitchen features, for example ovens and cooking hotplates, fridges, and preparation and storage space (Preece et al., 2023; Urban Land Institute, 2014; Wiles, 2020). With markedly reduced individual apartment floor areas, communal areas within apartment blocks (Gronostajska and Szczegielniak, 2021; Kleeman et al., 2022), and the surrounding built environment (Kennedy and Farr, 2018) become more important extensions to the living area of apartments. The community food environment, comprising the type and location of food outlets surrounding the apartment, (Glanz et al., 2005) influences food practices of apartment residents (Andrews and Warner, 2020; Bivoltsis et al., 2020).
With increased densification and shrinking apartments used as a strategy to help meet housing targets (The Australian Government The Treasury, 2024), prospective microapartment residents unfamiliar with this apartment typology may seek information from a variety of sources, including social media. TikTok is a social media application that has quickly grown in popularity since its introduction in 2017. It is currently the fifth most popular platform globally with over 1 billion users (Kemp and Datareportal, 2022). Users can upload their own content in the format of brief video and audio, and view and interact with other users’ content via likes, shares, and comments. Interaction is also encouraged via the use of video techniques whereby users add their own responses to pre-existing content and upload a combined video (duets and stitches). Posting users generate content to expand social networks, express creativity, or influence others through the generation of a public profile or product promotion (Bossen and Kottasz, 2020; Van Dam and Van Reijmersdal, 2019). Viewers’ primary motivation to use the platform is to seek information or for entertainment purposes (Jung et al., 2025). Given the potential for the public to glean information about small apartment living from social media platforms including TikTok, it is important to understand whether this information is reliable. If, in fact, it is not a reflection of reality, prospective microapartment residents may be presented with an unrealistic depiction of, and be inadequately prepared for, this lifestyle. To date, there have been no studies investigating how apartment life is displayed on this platform, and particularly whether barriers to healthy eating are evident in the portrayal. The overall aim of this project, therefore, was to i) determine the overall sentiment of TikTok videos posted with popular hashtags associated with small apartments ii) explore whether kitchen facilities, residents’ food practices, and hypothesised barriers to cooking at home and healthy eating practices are evident in these videos, and iii) compare the video portrayals to the living experience current residents of small apartments in Australia.
Methods
Using the TikTok search function in an incognito browser, the keyword ‘microapartment’ returned an initial list of hashtags for selection. Hashtags broader than the topic were removed from the list (for example, #catapartment, #ghettoapartment, #myfirstapartment), and singular and plural hashtags were combined. The final list of relevant hashtags was sorted in order of number of views. The top English language combinations related to each keyword (at 17 October 2022) were selected for investigation: #studioapartment (190.5 million views), #smallapartment (152.5 million views), #tinyapartment (62 million views), and #microapartment/ #microapartments (4.9 million views combined). The hashtag #apartment (3.6 billion views) was chosen as a comparator for apartments in general.
For each hashtag, the first 50 appearing videos were selected, with web address (URL) and number of likes recorded in an Excel spreadsheet. To combine the #microapartment/ #microapartments group, videos were sorted by number of likes and the top 50 videos selected (#microapartment n = 45, #microapartments n = 5). Broadly following a published protocol (Mandzufas et al., 2023), content analysis methodology was applied, enabling the researchers to assess visual features of the apartment kitchens evident in the videos and explore the experiences of platform users (Riffe et al., 2019). All videos (n = 250) were coded by applying a generic codebook with defined variables for video engagement (likes, shares and comments), user profile (verified account), and actor characteristics (age, gender). The codebook also defined overall sentiment of the video as positive, negative, or neutral, by considering the video content, music, and all verbal or written messages, including the caption added by the posting user. The video was categorised as having positive sentiment if it depicted the apartment in an explicitly positive way, promoting or encouraging an aspect of apartment living or indicating support for a behaviour. Where the video did not depict a clear positive or negative position on an aspect of apartment living, or was ambiguous, it was coded as neutral. Specific variables were additionally developed for this study to capture the predominant reason for sentiment, and hypothesised influences on healthy eating, including size and location of the apartment, presence of kitchen and dining features, interaction with communal areas and community food environment, and food practices.
Two researchers independently coded a random sample of 15 videos, with comparison and discussion to tighten codebook definitions and reduce ambiguity. Subsequently over half of all videos were coded by at least two researchers, achieving acceptable inter-rater reliability (Cohen's kappa >0.8).
As part of a larger qualitative study, Australian microapartment residents were purposively invited to participatory co-design workshops in 2024, with the purpose of co-designing recommendations to support healthy eating in this cohort. Participants watched the most-liked video from each of the four analysed hashtags relating to small apartments. The videos were shown in order from the largest apartment to smallest apartment (#studioapartment, #smallapartment, #microapartment, #tinyapartment). After viewing each video, participants were encouraged to discuss the relative sizes of the apartment, the ease of cooking in the apartment, and whether they thought that the videos were a realistic portrayal of apartment living.
The University of Western Australia's Human Research Ethics Committee provided ethics exemption for the TikTok content analysis (ref: 2022/ ET0000424) and ethics approval for the participatory workshop component (ref: 2022/ET000652). Participants gave written consent prior to commencement of the study, and verbal assent on joining the workshop.
R Studio was used for analysis, to provide descriptive statistics of the video features and the polling results.
Results
Video characteristics, grouped by hashtag, are presented in Table 1. Over a third of all videos (37%, n = 93) portrayed apartment living positively, with a positive sentiment to the apartment layout or décor predominating. Apartment size (4%, n = 9) was the predominant reason for videos ascribed negative sentiment (total 13%, n = 32). A kitchen was evident in almost half of all videos (49%, n = 123) and dining space in one third (32%, n = 79) but less than one in 20 videos (4%, n = 11) demonstrated cooking in the apartment. Of the 11 videos that demonstrated cooking in the apartment, six were contained within the #tinyapartment sample, four had cooking as the main purpose of the video, and none portrayed negative sentiment.
Summary of video content for TikTok videos tagged with apartment-related hashtags.
Workshop participants used the scale of their own apartment to judge the size of the apartments in the videos, with one participant turning the video camera so all participants could see the extent of their small studio apartment, with floor area of 18m2. There was broad agreement that the largest apartment was bigger than a ‘usual’ studio apartment, but the others were smaller than a usual studio apartment. All participants noted some expected difficulties in cooking in each of the apartments except the largest (#studioapartment).
Discussion
This appears to be the first study to investigate how videos posted in the online place on TikTok portray the kitchen facilities and residents’ food practices in small apartments. Overall, this study found that apartment living was not portrayed negatively, and difficulties with healthy eating were rarely evident. Current residents of small studio apartments felt that the apartments shown in the sampled videos, particularly the smaller apartments, were not conducive to cooking.
One reason for the lack of negative sentiment in the sample of TikTok videos studied could be related to the tendency for social media users to only post content showing positive aspects of their lives, for the purposes of entertainment and self-promotion (Bossen and Kottasz, 2020). For example, previous studies investigating the characteristics and content of videos associated with unhealthy food and beverage products on TikTok reported that the majority of videos had a positive sentiment (Ayalde et al., 2023; Brooks et al., 2022). In this study, apartment size was mentioned in one in five videos, and workshop participants considered most of the apartments portrayed in the videos sampled as being smaller than their perception of a ‘usual’ apartment. However, size was not portrayed as a dominant positive or negative aspect in most videos. Indeed, within each of the hashtags that had the smallest apartment size (i.e. #tinyapartment and #microapartment) only one video portrayed apartment size as the dominant negative sentiment reason.
Surprisingly, the expected physical constraints of small apartment kitchens were not evident in the videos. For example, around one third of the videos (including #microapartment) had full-size refrigerators and one in ten had dishwashers present. Furthermore, videos portraying cooking at home highlighted the ability to create home-cooked meals despite limited kitchen and food preparation space and facilities. For example, one video was titled, ‘How I cook with no kitchen’, with further captioning stating, ‘I made steak, boiled yam and salad for lunch today with no kitchen’. Another example was a video demonstrating what the user cooks and eats in their apartment which was titled, ‘Well heres (sic) how I throw down in my #tinyspace’, with video content comprising a series of snapshots of dishes cooked in the apartment kitchen. Nonetheless, current small studio apartment residents did not feel that the apartments portrayed would enable them to cook in their habitual manner.
Very few videos displayed or mentioned interactions with the surrounding community food environment (purchasing or consuming foods prepared outside the home, including grocery shopping). In contrast, prior research indicates that residents of high-rise apartments in Australia (i.e. 4 storeys or more) spend almost a third of their weekly food expenditure budget on meals prepared outside of the home (Oostenbach et al., 2021), yet this behaviour is not correspondingly reflected in the current study.
Whilst the size of apartment, portrayal of kitchen facilities and overall sentiment differed between hashtags, this study found that apartment living was not portrayed negatively overall, and difficulties with healthy eating were rarely in evidence. However, current residents of small studio apartments, of similar size to those portrayed in the videos, felt that the videos did not explicitly mention or show any of the barriers to home cooking and healthy eating they have experienced in their own apartments, and would expect in the apartments shown on the videos. This suggests that, as expected, TikTok users tend to glamorise apartment life, rather than portraying these more negative aspects. Therefore, prospective microapartment residents might benefit from tailored recommendations to support their healthy eating, that have a practical foundation in the reality of living in very small apartments. However, a limitation of this study was that the videos were eligible if English was the spoken language and therefore may have originated from any location, yet the workshop participants were all residing in Australia. It was not possible to discern whether cultural differences, or indeed differences in design and layout of apartments, could be responsible for their perception of glamorisation. Regardless, with so little research describing the kitchen facilities, interactions with community food environments, and eating behaviours of small apartment residents, we have no certainty whether the video portrayals reflect the reality of microapartment life and can be relied upon by the general public.
Footnotes
Ethical approval
The University of Western Australia's Human Research Ethics Committee provided ethics exemption for the TikTok content analysis (ref: 2022/ ET0000424) and ethics approval for the participatory workshop component (ref: 2022/ET000652).
Consent for publication
Not applicable.
Consent to participate
All workshop participants provided written (digital) informed consent prior to being invited to the workshop, and provided verbal assent prior to workshop commencement.
Authors’ contributions
JM, KL, and GT conceptualised the study and designed the methodology. JM and DW undertook the data collection and analysis. GT, SF, and SH provided supervision throughout the process. JM prepared the original and subsequent drafts and all authors provided critical review and commentary.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: JM was supported by Research Training Program Fees Offset Scholarship, The University of Western Australia Tuition Fee Scholarship and University Postgraduate Award (The Built Food Environment and Children's Health), The University of Western Australia. GT was supported by a Stan Perron Foundation People and Platforms Grant and an Edith Cowan University Vice Chancellor's Professorial Fellowship. SF was supported by an ARC Future Fellowship (FT210100899).
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Availability of data and materials
The dataset generated during and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.