Verbs in a sentence are in either active voice or passive voice. Usually.

Active means the subject of a sentence is doing the thing the verb describes. Passive means the subject is receiving that action—something is being done to the subject. (Passive does not mean the past tense, as some believe.)

An example of passive voice:

TikTok is a popular social media channel for pizzerias, and now many videos of pizzas are being posted.

The same sentence written in the active voice might read something like:

TikTok is a popular social media channel for pizzerias, and now restaurants are posting videos of pizzas.

The former doesn't tell you who is posting all those pizza videos to TikTok. (Who is it … ? UberEats customers? The pizzaiolo or pizza slinger himself? Little Caesar?)

The latter makes it clear that the pizzerias themselves are posting.

Usually you want to use the active voice, or active writing, instead of the passive voice. Why:

1. Active voice makes clear who is doing what. It avoids the ambiguity that passive voice creates.
2. Active voice sounds zippier and more alive. Passive tends to sound a little stilted and awkward, as if you're just learning a new language.

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Passive voice isn't flat-out wrong. Use it:

1. When you don't know who is responsible for the action (“My lunch was stolen from the break room fridge”); or
2. When it's irrelevant because the action is what matters most. A famous example: “The president was sworn in.”

Of course, you can also use passive voice to skirt blame. My favorite example of this came years ago from my own son, then age 5.

“Your sunglasses were broken,” he said.

I asked him: “Did you accidentally break them?”

He stared at me blankly. Said nothing, in either passive or active voice.

For the record: I'm pretty sure he did it. But he never fessed up.