When VaNessa Thompson wants to truly focus on doing homework for her doctoral classes at Oakland University near Detroit, she gets out her smartphone, props it on her desk, and starts streaming live video of herself on TikTok.
“People that follow me on TikTok, they’ll get a push notification, ‘VaNessa’s going live,’” she explains.
For the next two hours or so, she says she’ll do whatever reading or paper-writing she has due, occasionally stopping for a break to look at her phone, where text comments from viewers trickle in encouraging her or asking what she’s working on.
She’s all alone at home, except that she’s not. “It helps people create a community around studying,” she says.
Thompson is part of a trend of college and high school students who stream themselves studying on TikTok or YouTube, often using the hashtag #studywithme.
One key goal, she and others using the hashtag say, is to try to put social pressure on themselves to stay on task and keep up with studying for a set time period.
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