TikTok is taking a page out of Facebook’s early playbook by bringing back the campus-only social network experience. The platform officially launched Campus Verification, allowing users to connect with classmates, find peers by graduation year, and turn TikTok into a digital campus hub.
How campus verification works
To activate the option, students can visit their TikTok profile, tap Add school, enter their school and graduation year, and verify with their academic email. After verification, their school and year display on their profile.
From there, they can access a dedicated page for their university, where they can
- Explore classmates by graduation year.
- Discover the most-followed students on campus.
- Use TikTok as a networking and social discovery tool.
Verification is powered by UNiDAYS, making this feature available at over 6,000 universities globally.
TikTok is not thinking only about short-form videos. With Campus Verification, the application will become a bridge between digital and real life, helping students find friends, mentors, and classmates in one of the most important phases of their studies.
For freshmen entering college, the feature would help to reduce the awkwardness of the first few weeks in college, as it would give an easy way to introduce themselves online.
While the feature adds convenience, some users worry that it will also make it easy to track others. TikTok addresses this by making Campus Verification completely optional. Those students who do not want their TikTok life to be separate from academics can easily skip the feature.
Facebook has already tried a similar concept with its “Campus” experiment, but shut it down because of scaling problems and verification. However, TikTok comes out with better foundations, broader university reach, and reliable verification systems.
