Bit manipulation involves using binary representations of numbers and applying bitwise operations like AND, OR, XOR, and shifts to solve problems more efficiently. It’s particularly useful for problems involving flags, toggling, or checking conditions on individual bits. For example, you can use bit manipulation to check if a number is a power of two, to find subsets of a set, or to perform arithmetic operations like multiplying or dividing by powers of two. Bit manipulation allows you to perform operations in constant time, making it ideal for competitive programming when dealing with low-level operations or optimizing specific parts of your solution.