Abstract
This study examines how TikTok functions as an agent of consumer socialization and facilitates intergenerational knowledge exchange within families. Drawing on 20 in-depth interviews with adolescents aged 11–16, the study investigates how they acquire, interpret, and transmit consumer knowledge via TikTok’s platform design, focusing on what they learn, how they learn, from whom, why they engage, and how they pass this knowledge on to their parents. The findings reveal three key insights. First, TikTok serves as a dynamic site of consumer learning, where adolescents develop transactional knowledge, advertising literacy, and consumption motives through peer-generated content. Second, TikTok’s algorithmic and interactive features allow adolescents to verify and negotiate the credibility of information through peer feedback and participatory practices. Third, adolescents function as informal educators within their families, transferring platform-based expertise through spontaneous and deliberate exchanges. These insights advance consumer socialization theory by reframing adolescents as situated experts whose digital literacies shape intergenerational learning in the platform age.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
