Caitlin Gilbert

Here’s how TikTok ‘power users’ end up scrolling 4 hours a day or more Washington Post reporters analyzed data from over 800 TikTok users to learn how the app turns people into power users, some of whom spend hours per day scrolling.

🤳EXCLUSIVE: We analyzed real data from over 800 U.S. TikTok users to reveal how the app transforms casual users into power users.

Extremely proud of this one, over a year in the making w/ @richardsima.bsky.social Leslie Shapiro @asteckelberg.bsky.social @ence.bsky.social

wapo.st/4obueib

I think that’s a fair take, but we asked users themselves about what they preferred too and landed on “power users” but we do use that term and “heavier users” interchangeably in the story itself as our neutral nomenclature.

Thanks so much, Scott, that means a lot!!

we avoided using the word "addicted" unless users themselves described themselves that way! we obviously could not establish that every one of these users had an actual addiction to the app without some sort of clinical review. "Power users" was our name for the heaviest-watch-time cohort of users.

We were sick of speculation. So thanks to the 1,100 people who shared their data with us, we were able to show how TikTok keeps users hooked on the app. Over just 5 months, users appeared to use the app more compulsively.

Stay tuned for more stories off of this incredible dataset!

TikTok is massive, fragmented and opaque: millions of Americans are pulled into a nearly infinite variety of niche corners by a recommendation system that we don’t know much about, making it difficult to understand how the constant scroll affects real people.

We teamed up with our audience to measure TikTok’s unmistakable draw In a unique experiment, The Washington Post collected more than 1,100 TikTok users’ data so it could analyze how the social media platform’s algorithm worked.

This story follows our unprecedented collab with our audience to build a database of 15 million TikTok videos and associated metadata from over a thousand users’ watch histories.

Read more about how my incredible colleagues and I did this here: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

After 5 months, both groups of users were spending less time on each video before swiping to the next one, an indication that scrolling on TikTok was becoming an automatic or habitual behavior.

More casual users also opened the app twice as often per day by September of last year, and power users continued to open the app about 20 times per day.

We measured three metrics: daily watch time, app opens, and time to swipe to next video. For users who were spending about a half hour a day on the app in April 2024, watch time more than doubled 5 months later, sometimes even quadrupling. Heavier users continued to spend over 4 hrs a day on TikTok.

Here’s how TikTok ‘power users’ end up scrolling 4 hours a day or more Washington Post reporters analyzed data from over 800 TikTok users to learn how the app turns people into power users, some of whom spend hours per day scrolling.

🤳EXCLUSIVE: We analyzed real data from over 800 U.S. TikTok users to reveal how the app transforms casual users into power users.

Extremely proud of this one, over a year in the making w/ @richardsima.bsky.social Leslie Shapiro @asteckelberg.bsky.social @ence.bsky.social

wapo.st/4obueib

How some veterans exploit $193 billion VA program, due to lax controls The Department of Veterans Affairs spends billions on dubious and even fraudulent disabilities benefits. Meanwhile, some deserving cases wait.

Taxpayers will spend $193 billion this year to compensate 6.9 million disabled veterans on the presumption that their ability to work is impaired. Yet we found many claims are for minor afflictions like hair loss, acne + varicose veins. By Craig Whitlock, Lisa Rein & @caitlingilbert.bsky.social:

thank you! stay tuned for the next few stories coming this week and next

About 556,000 veterans receive disability benefits for eczema, 332,000 for hemorrhoids, 110,000 for benign skin growths, 81,000 for acne and 74,000 for varicose veins, the most recently available figures from VA show. Payouts for such mundane conditions collectively cost billions of dollars a year.

For a program that is intended to compensate for lost earnings potential from service-sustained injuries, the biggest increases in disability ratings are for prime-age, fully-employed vets. Roughly 1 in 60 disabled vets reported an income of $250,000 or higher in 2023.

The average number of disabilities per vet has grown from under 3 to about 7—it’s now common for vets to file for 20 or more disabilities. Taxpayers will spend about $193bn this year to compensate about 6.9 million disabled vets.

How some veterans exploit $193 billion VA program, due to lax controls The Department of Veterans Affairs spends billions on dubious and even fraudulent disabilities benefits. Meanwhile, some deserving cases wait.

EXCLUSIVE: Veterans are swamping the VA with dubious disability claims, including cases of fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars. 100% disability is now the most common rating.

our first story in our series on the VA’s disability program, with Craig Whitlock and Lisa Rein:

wapo.st/3VN0qw9

Picture of Hayao Miyazaki with text that reads “A pain! A pain! Such a pain!”

A picture of Hayao Miyazaki looking tired and over everything with his hands on his head, eyes closed, with cigarette hanging out of mouth

have two totally different huge investigations publishing over the next couple of days and I’m five months pregnant so it’s time to re-up the hayao memes

‘Based on what I feel’: Trump escalates attack on childhood vaccines Trump promoted long-debunked claims that vaccines can cause autism as he called for changes to the childhood immunization schedule sought by anti-vaccine activists.

Trump’s attack on vaccines yesterday — delivered from the White House — “was the most dangerously irresponsible press conference in the realm of public health in American history” @pauloffit.bsky.social told us.

More on Trump’s false claims with @lenasun.bsky.social

Trump administration set to tie Tylenol to autism risk, officials say The Trump administration plans to tie Tylenol to autism risk while touting another drug, leucovorin, as a potential autism treatment.

New: inside Trump’s “very important” autism announcement for Monday

— new warnings on tylenol’s risk for pregnant women

— new endorsement of leucovorin’s potential as autism treatment

— new NIH data science initiatives underway

Why 1 in 6 U.S. parents are rejecting vaccine recommendations A wide-ranging Washington Post-KFF poll details who tends to reject vaccine recommendations and their reasoning.

Meet the parents skipping or delaying vaccination: Our @washingtonpost.com @kff.org poll found they are more likely to home-school their children, be White and very religious, identify as Republican or be under 35

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Just 6% of U.S. parents say they are "anti-vaccine" and 8%-13% believe RFK Jr.'s false vaccine claims. But larger shares "don't know" enough to reject false claims or have other doubts about childhood vaccines - 26% think the CDC recommends too many shots www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

‘It was me’: Suspect in Charlie Kirk shooting appears to confess in Discord chat ‘Im sorry for all of this’ read a message from the suspect’s account, according to two people familiar with the message and screenshots obtained by The Post.

Exclusive: The suspect in Charlie Kirk’s killing appears to have confessed to friends in a Discord chat shortly before turning himself in to law enforcement, according to two people familiar with the chat and screenshots obtained by The Post.

Statement from Post Guild Leadership: The Washington Post Guild condemns the unjust firing of columnist Karen Attiah

somebody somewhere should be nominated in every possible category and for every performance, and Jeff is INCREDIBLE

JEFF HILLER EMMY WINNER GOD BLESS

Trump officials to link child deaths to covid shots, alarming career scientists The move to link coronavirus vaccines to 25 child deaths alarms career scientists who say the shots have been extensively studied.

SCOOP: Trump health officials plan to link covid vaccines to the deaths of 25 children as they consider limiting which Americans should get the shots, per sources. W @rachelroubein.bsky.social @ddiamond.bsky.social
www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Jeffrey Epstein Email Trove Reveals Ghislaine Maxwell’s Secrets A cache of 18,000 messages obtained by Bloomberg News reveals Maxwell’s deep ties and involvement with the disgraced financier and sex offender.

NEW: We got access to Jeffrey Epstein’s personal Yahoo inbox — more than 18,000 emails.

It shows Epstein’s world in his own words: an unfiltered look at how his operation worked, who enabled it, and how Ghislaine Maxwell stayed at the center of it all.

Charlie Kirk has died at 31 after being shot today, according to conservative online channel Real America's Voice, where Kirk's show aired.

another moment where it’d be really great if X had some semblance of content moderation for graphic videos! My entire feed is people sharing close up videos of a human being getting shot.