With the beginning of the school year fast approaching, TikTok has announced a new feature to help students connect with their classmates in the app.
Called “Campus Verification,” the feature enables students to add their college campus to their TikTok profile, providing another means to search for others in the same year.
As you can see in these example screens, Campus Verification will provide a means to connect with others on campus, and find out info about others in the same year.
The process confirms each student’s enrolment at the college that they indicate by using their college email address as verification. Which hasn’t always been an effective filter for such, but still, it provides some barrier to entry, which should help to keep at least some imposters out of the program.
In addition, TikTok says that it’s working with student verification platform UNiDAYS to add an extra checking layer to the process.
And once you’ve entered all of the required details, students will then be able to search their school’s page, filter by graduation year, and see which of their peers are most followed in the app.
TikTok says that the feature is designed to help students feel more comfortable making the transition to college:
“This fall, millions of Gen Z students will set foot on campus for the very first time. For parents, you've packed the car, stocked up on snacks, and given the ‘call me if you need me’ speech. What every parent wants is for their teens to find friends in those first few weeks. Research shows the first weeks on campus are a make-or-break period for forming social connections that can shape a student’s entire college experience.”
And with so many students already active on TikTok, and communicating info about their interests, it could be a powerful connector, helping to ease the transition by facilitating friendships.
It’s an interesting concept, but not an entirely original one, given that Meta launched a pretty similar concept back in 2020 called “Facebook Campus.” Meta shut the program down a couple of years later, due to problems in expanding the availability of the option, and concerns around non-students gaining access to the tool. Which has also been a problem in other college-focused apps, and it’ll be interesting to see if TikTok’s approach is more effective at managing this element, and ensuring student safety.
Because TikTok’s certainly taking a big leap to begin with. At launch, TikTok says that Campus Verification will be available in 6,000 U.S. universities.
That’s more than Facebook Campus had, and it adds a whole lot of complexity to its enforcement program right off the bat.
So it could be a good option for connecting, but it might also become a headache for TikTok’s team.
