POV Coming Of Age

About

POV Coming Of Age refers to a trend on TikTok in which users act out skits parodying coming of age film tropes and imagine various aspects of life as a coming of age movie. The trend is largely collected under the hashtag #comingofage and the original sound to the song "Coming of Age" by Blondes.^[1] The trend saw an increase in popularity in October of 2020 when the hashtag made its way to TikTok's trending page. It shares similarities to the I'm The Main Character trend started on TikTok in May of 2020.

Origin

Coming of age films are a popular topic on TikTok, with multiple related trends. For example, a trend from early 2020 had users sharing their favorite coming of age movies (example shown below, left) while another had users dressing as various staple coming of age movie characters (shown below, right).

It's unknown what the first POV Coming Of Age video is, but early examples of the trend date back to at least mid-2020. On May 8th, TikToker salmanoren uploaded a video imagining his life as a coming of age movie, garnering over 363 thousand views in over 5 months (shown below, left) On June 15th, 2020, TikToker lucyblanc uploaded a video captioned, "POV: you are watching an intro to a coming of age 2000s movie" in which she recreates a cliche coming of age movie intro (shown below, right). The video garnered over 571 thousand views in 4 months.

On June 30th, TikToker celeste_elizabeth4 uploaded a video set to the song "Coming of Age" by Blondes, parodying the way main characters are portrayed in teen romance movies (shown below). The video garnered over 515 thousand views in just over 3 months, and is one of the earliest uses of the sound attributed to the trend.

Spread

On July 6th, 2020, celeste_elizabeth4 posted another POV Coming Of Age video, this time tackling the portrayal of male romantic interests in coming of age movies (shown below, left). The video gained over 1.8 million views in 3 months. On September 19th, TikToker jackietodd_ uploaded a video acting out the cliche ending to ever 2000s movie, gaining over 1.6 million views in a month (shown below, right).

POV Coming Of Age videos saw a significant increase in September of 2020. It's possible the inability to attend physical classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic increased the trend, as students began romanticizing school life, as evidenced by other education-based trends like Studying To Mario Kart Music. On October 12th, TikToker better call all uploaded a video captioned, "If class ended like a 2000's Teen Movie," gaining over 4.6 million views in 10 days (shown below, left). On October 18th, TikToker kallmekris uploaded a video parodying coming of age movie trailers, garnering over 5.7 million views in 4 days (shown below, right).

On October 21st, the hashtag #comingofage hit TikTok's trending page, giving coming of age videos a boost on the platform and encouraging more users to create them. As of October 22nd, videos under the hashtag have received over 81.9 million total views.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References