Perceived Media Affordances on TikTok and YouTube among U.S. College Students

Abstract

This study examined how users perceived media affordances on TikTok and YouTube, adopting a middle-ground perspective between technological determinism and social constructionism. Building on affordance theory, the study aimed to disentangle platform-specific technological features from sociocultural patterns of use and to provide a systematic framework for cross-platform comparison of social media affordances. An online survey was conducted with U.S. college students (N=351). Respondents evaluated perceived affordances of TikTok and YouTube across multiple dimensions. Multivariate analyses of variance were employed to assess differences in perceived affordance salience between the two platforms while demographic factors were controlled. The results showed that YouTube’s affordances were perceived as more salient in three dimensions: editability, searchability, and signaling. In contrast, TikTok was perceived as more salient in six dimensions: awareness, persistence, personalization, pervasiveness, visibility, and sharing. Two affordances—association and evaluability—were perceived as equivalent across platforms, suggesting functional convergence in social connection and feedback mechanisms. The findings contributed to affordance research by systematically organizing overlapping affordances and enabling more precise comparative analyses across platforms. By unconfounding media from their affordances, this study advanced theoretical clarity and offered methodological guidance for future research on social media use, platform design, and media literacy in digitally mediated environments.