For most of human history, knowledge had gatekeepers. What we knew depended on who could afford an education, access a library, enter a university or find an expert willing to teach them. The internet changed that equation, putting an extraordinary amount of knowledge within reach of almost anyone.
But making knowledge available is only the first step in democratizing it. The harder question is whether people can find it, understand it, trust it and see a place for themselves in what they learn. Increasingly, there is another question: can we make people care enough to stop and look?
That feels particularly relevant on September 16, the International Day of Science, Technology and Innovation for the South. Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2024, the day focuses on strengthening science, technology and innovation across the Global South. Its purpose goes beyond access to technology, emphasizing the ability to produce, nurture, access, understand, select, adapt and use scientific and technological knowledge.
In other words, the goal is not simply to make the South a better consumer of technology, but to build the capacity to understand and shape it. That makes education central, and education is no longer happening only through institutions that traditionally control how knowledge is distributed.
Learning Is Becoming More Open and Discovery-Driven
The biggest change may be that learning no longer always starts with a decision to learn. We are used to thinking of education as intentional: you choose a subject, find a course, open a book or go to a class. But much of what we encounter online happens before that decision. We come across an idea first, become curious, and only then decide whether we want to understand it.
That is particularly relevant to STEM. Fields shaping our future, from artificial intelligence and robotics to biotechnology and climate science, can feel highly specialized from the outside. If people only encounter them once they actively decide to study them, we miss the opportunity to create that initial interest. Discovery can make a subject visible in the first place. Most people do not wake up thinking, “Today I am going to learn quantum physics.” More often, they see something that makes them stop and think, “Wait, is that actually possible?” That moment of curiosity can be where learning begins.
This is one reason platforms such as TikTok have become relevant to the education conversation. As a discovery platform, TikTok can put STEM content in front of someone who did not open the app intending to learn about science or technology. A short explanation, experiment or unexpected question can become an entry point into a subject that might otherwise have remained outside their attention. But STEM content is competing with everything else on the platform. We have largely solved information scarcity; increasingly, we face attention scarcity. A good STEM video therefore has to do more than contain information—it has to give someone a reason to care.
The point is not that a 60-second video can replace years of education. It cannot! It is that education can begin in more places than it used to, and that first encounter can matter. If democratizing knowledge means giving more people the opportunity to find, understand and engage with ideas, discovery is now an important part of that process.
TikTok Is Building a New Layer for STEM Discovery
TikTok has increasingly recognized that this discovery model can extend beyond entertainment and into education. Its dedicated STEM Feed is one of the clearest examples. Launched in Sri Lanka in September 2025 with the support of the Government of Sri Lanka, it created a dedicated in-app destination for science, technology, engineering and mathematics content.
What makes the STEM Feed significant is not simply that it contains educational videos. It changes how people can encounter STEM. Instead of requiring someone to already know what they want to learn and search for it, the feed puts science and technology into the discovery process itself. In markets where the feature is available, younger users can have the STEM Feed enabled by default, while others can choose to access it through their content settings.
The format matters too. Short-form video gives creators a way to turn complicated subjects into visual explanations, demonstrations, stories and questions. That can make the first encounter with a subject considerably less intimidating. In Sri Lanka, the initiative also supports local-language STEM content through #STEMTok, giving creators and educators another way to connect scientific ideas with local audiences and contexts. That local-language dimension matters to me because access is not the same as accessibility. A scientific explanation may exist online, but that does not necessarily mean it feels available to a student who is more comfortable learning in Sinhala or Tamil. Democratising knowledge also means translating ideas into the languages, examples and cultural contexts in which people actually live.
This is where I think the idea of democratizing STEM becomes more tangible. It is not simply about putting more information online. It is about reducing the number of barriers between a person and the moment when they become curious enough to learn. Discovery, format, language and distribution all play a part in that.
Democratizing Knowledge Requires More Than Reach
But the ‘reach’ alone does not make knowledge useful. If democratisation means giving more people access to information, it must also help them navigate what is reliable and worth trusting.
TikTok has built a credibility layer into its STEM Feed for this reason. Content is assessed by Common Sense Networks for appropriateness and the Poynter Institute for information reliability, and must pass both checks to be eligible. This does not make every STEM video equivalent to a textbook or peer-reviewed paper, but it reflects the responsibility that comes with making knowledge more accessible.
The scale of the opportunity is already considerable. TikTok has reported that almost 15 million STEM-related videos were published globally over a three-year period, with STEM content growing by 35 percent since the launch of the dedicated feed in the Unites States and Europe alone. These are platform-reported figures, so they tell us more about the scale of participation and reach than they do about learning outcomes. A view is not the same as comprehension, and engagement is not the same as education.
That distinction matters as technology becomes more complex. AI is changing not only what people need to learn, but how they determine whether information is real, accurate or generated. Digital literacy increasingly requires AI literacy, critical thinking and the ability to question what we encounter. Democratising knowledge cannot simply mean giving people more content; it means giving them better opportunities to understand, question and use it.
Sri Lanka Has the Tools. Now We Need the People.
The infrastructure to democratize STEM knowledge is here. What we need now is participation.
Sri Lanka has scientists, engineers, researchers, developers, educators and technology professionals who understand the subjects shaping the next decade. But when that expertise stays inside laboratories, lecture halls and institutions, it only reaches those who already have access. To genuinely democratize STEM, more of that knowledge needs to enter the public sphere.
This is where STEM creators need to step up. Not every expert needs to become an influencer, but knowledge has little power if it cannot travel. Those working in AI, engineering, science, medicine, computing and emerging technologies can make these fields more visible, understandable and relevant—and give someone their first reason to care. Sometimes that first spark is enough to turn curiosity into a question, a subject into a career, or a consumer of technology into someone who builds it.
For too long, the Global South has been framed as a consumer of knowledge and technology developed elsewhere. Sri Lanka has an opportunity to change that: not only to make global STEM knowledge more accessible here, but to make Sri Lankan knowledge, talent and ideas visible to the world.
We have the platforms, the audience, the technology and the expertise. What we need now are the people willing to share it. Because democratizing knowledge depends on participation. If we step forward, the next generation can see STEM not as something happening somewhere else, but as something they can understand, question and help shape.
So, are we ready, Sri Lanka?
