Lakota Johnson is a 17-year-old aspiring model, actor and social media influencer based in Brisbane. Like many teenagers, he has posted selfies and snaps of his friends to Instagram for years and came into 2019 sitting pretty at 18,000 Instagram followers.

But on January 19 Johnson's window to the social world changed when he decided to try his hand at the new app on the block – video-sharing service TikTok.