With the new academic year approaching, TikTok has introduced a Campus Verification feature designed to help college students find and connect with their peers. Verified students can now add their university to their profile by using their official university email, and access peer search tools filtered by graduation year. The feature will initially cover about 6,000 U.S. institutions and also incorporates identity validation via UNiDAYS.
This move by TikTok offers a bridge between its entertainment-first reputation and emerging social utility—particularly in connecting younger users. Given that alternative platforms such as Connyct have already targeted college social engagement directly, TikTok’s feature may position it to fill a similar role at a much larger scale.
While reminiscent of Meta’s 2020 Facebook Campus experiment, TikTok’s launch appears more expansive from day one. Facebook ultimately discontinued Campus amid issues around fraud and limited adoption. TikTok faces similar challenges at scale, especially ensuring verification integrity and student safety across thousands of campuses.
This new feature fills the same gap as smaller campus-focused apps like Connyct, which were meant to be alternatives to TikTok specifically for college campus connections. Depending on how this new feature performs, this could place certain niche apps at a major disadvantage due to their purpose being overwritten by TikTok itself – but only time will tell if the Campus Verification system gets widely adopted by its target audience.
