  Researchers use information about the amount of time people spend on digital
media for numerous purposes. While social media platforms commonly do not allow
external access to measure the use time directly, a usual alternative method is
to use participants' self-estimation. However, doubts were raised about the
self-estimation's accuracy, posing questions regarding the cognitive factors
that underline people's perceptions of the time they spend on social media. In
this work, we build on prior studies and explore a novel social media platform
in the context of use time: TikTok. We conduct platform-independent
measurements of people's self-reported and server-logged TikTok usage (n=255)
to understand how users' demographics and platform engagement influence their
perceptions of the time they spend on the platform and their estimation
accuracy. Our work adds to the body of work seeking to understand time
estimations in different digital contexts and identifies new influential
engagement factors.
