As of February 2025, it was found that around 14.1 percent of TikTok's global audience were women between the ages of 18 and 24 years, while male users of the same age formed approximately 16.6 percent of the platform's audience. The online audience of the popular social video platform was further composed of 14.6 percent of female users aged between 25 and 34 years, and 20.7 percent of male users in the same age group.

TikTok, a social video app launched in 2016 used for sharing and creating video content, continues to grow in popularity. As of 2022, approximately 41 percent of users in the U.S. engaged with the popular social video app. Around seven in 10 respondents aged between 18 and 19 years were using TikTok, while usage among respondents aged between 20 and 29 years was approximately 56 percent.

TikTok global usage In 2021, TikTok had 1 billion active monthly users worldwide, a growth of 45 percent on the previous year. As of April 2021, the majority of global TikTok users spent less than one hour per week on the platform. Eleven percent of users spent five to ten hours a week on the app, and six percent were using it for ten hours or more per week.

Users' opinion: safety concerns and positive influenceOnline TikTok challenges and hoaxes have been a topic of discussion in recent years, with parents raising concerns about safety regarding content posted on the platform. As for U.S. adults’ opinions of TikTok, favorable attitudes towards the platform decrease with age. Overall, as of November 2021, 33 percent of users aged 18 to 34 years had a favorable opinion of the app, but just one in 10 users aged between 45 and 64 years felt the same. Around 20 percent of all adults had a very unfavorable view of TikTok. Despite the criticism, the platform hosts a large number of positive influencers, focusing on themes such as mental health awareness and body positivity. In 2021, one of the most followed TikTok educators and activists was Nicole Lilly Christou, with her profile @nikkililly reporting approximately 7.7 million followers in the United Kingdom alone.

According to a May 2023 survey of social media users in the United States, over 76 percent of users aged between 18 and 24 years were on TikTok. In comparison, approximately 70 percent of U.S. teens were on TikTok and interacted with the app on a monthly basis. TikTok usage diminished in older users, with only 14 percent of U.S. users aged between 55 and 64 years reporting engaging with the popular social video app.

In March 2024, approximately 76 percent of online users aged between 15 and 24 years in the United Kingdom engaged with social video app TikTok. Users aged between 25 and 34 years were the second largest age demographic on the platform, while only one quarter of users aged 75 and older reported engaging with TikTok. Overall, half of the UK digital population engaged with the popular Chinese-developed app.

Social video platform TikTok made significant gains in popularity in the Netherlands between 2020 and 2023. In 2023, there were approximately four million TikTok users in the Netherlands, up from three million in the previous year. Users aged 20 to 24 years accounted for the biggest share of TikTok’s audience in the country, recording approximately 850,000 users in 2023.

Mobile social As of the end of 2022, mobile social media were the most engaging app category for users in the Netherlands. On average, Dutch users was reported spending 65 minutes per day on social apps, compared to 26 minutes spent interacting with casual gaming apps, and 14 daily minutes spent on shopping apps on a daily basis. Mobile-first communication and chat apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat ranked among the most popular social platforms among Dutch users in the third quarter of 2022. Social video app TikTok has become increasingly more popular, reaching four million users in 2023.

Most popular Dutch content creators With 14 million followers and several years of activity within the global beauty content community, Nikkie Tutorials was the second most popular Dutch content creator on YouTube in February 2023. With the rise of TikTok and short-video features like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, video has become one of the most engaging formats for content creators to connect with their audiences in the Netherlands as in the rest of the digital market. As of September 2022, online Dutch influencer Sherell Martini reportedly had 4.84 million TikTok followers, while online personality and hair influencer Quinity Mirjam recorded over three million followers.

The most TikTok users in Germany were found among Gen Z as of 2023, with almost 53 percent stating that they used the platform. Roughly 27 percent of millennials said that had a TikTok account. The TikTok phenomenon TikTok is a video-sharing app that became extremely popular during the first half of 2020. Millions of people signed up to the social media platform and started making short videos of themselves doing various activities. One of the most common types of videos on the app is dancing videos in which people choreograph short dances to parts of popular songs and then the dance is replicated by thousands of users. There were over 1.9 billion users on TikTok in 2023, and in 2024 this figure is predicted to grow to over two billion. With an audience so large, there are many opportunities for success on the app. Popular names who found fame on the app include Charli D’Amelio, Addison Rae, and Khabane Lame to name a few. There are also several famous German TikTok accounts such as Youneszarou, Noelgoescrazy, and Condsty who all have over 23 million followers. Social media networks How does TikTok compare to other social media apps? It was ranked as the fifth most popular worldwide, top of the list were Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. This is quite impressive when considering that the app was banned in India, one of its largest user bases, in 2020. When it comes to the amount of time that Germans spend on social media, however, they rake quite low in comparison to other countries. Brazil topped the list with the average respondents spending almost four hours on social media each day, whilst in Germany, this figure was just one hour and 33 minutes. Currently, in Germany there are almost 56 million people who use social media, according to preliminary figures, however, by 2028, this figure is expected to grow by over 11 million. It seems clear that social media is here to stay.

In Australia in 2022, more than half of TikTok's users were aged under 24; for users aged between 18 and 24, 28.86 percent were female, and 11.82 percent were male. For younger users aged between 13 and 17, 22.26 percent were female and 8.57 percent were male.

As of the third quarter of 2020, a quarter of UK internet users aged 15 to 25 years were using short-form video sharing app TikTok. By comparison, just nine percent of those aged 26 to 35 years were using the app.

As of June 2023, Gen Z, or those between the ages of 19 and 25 years old, made up the majority of the TikTok user base in Singapore, with 33.32 percent. This was followed by Millennials between the ages of 26 and 32 years, comprising around 28.65 percent of TikTok users.

TikTok usage in Singapore

Introduced in 2018 in Singapore, TikTok has rapidly grown to become one of the country's most widely used social media platforms. As of June 2023, it was the most downloaded app in the city-state, recording 782.33 thousand downloads. This rise was also reflected in user engagement, as Singaporean users spent a monthly average of 20.18 hours on TikTok in 2022. It enabled TikTok to reach a monthly revenue of 1.11 million U.S. dollars in December 2022. The platform's rapid development has made it a major hub for the younger generation and is shaping digital trends in the country.

The rise of TikTok Shop 

TikTok is no longer just a video-sharing platform; it has expanded its functionality to become a social commerce hub. TikTok Shop was launched in Singapore in August 2022. The marketplace is integrated into the TikTok platform, enabling consumers and creators to connect and engage directly with brands and sellers. In the city-state, where e-commerce holds a major position, this new feature is in line with the trend towards social commerce. Indeed, in February 2023, 27 percent of people surveyed in the country replied that they regularly made purchases on social media. Among them, 30 percent used TikTok for their purchases.

As of March 2024, TikTok commanded almost 30 hours of engagement per month from UK users aged between 15 and 24 years. In comparison, the average time spent across all age demographics in the UK was of approximately 14 hours per month. Users aged between 25 and 34 years spent approximately 17 hours monthly engaging with the popular social video app TikTok.

As of June 2023, the Gen Z or those between the ages of 19 to 25 years old, made up the majority of TikTok user base in Malaysia, with 35.61 percent. This was followed by the Millennials between the ages of 26 to 32 years, comprising around 29 percent of TikTok users.

In 2021, almost 30 percent of TikTok influencers' audiences in the United Kingdom were women aged between 18 and 24 years. The second largest TikTok demographic was women aged 13 to 17. In comparison, male users on the platform represented 33.5 of TikTok's user base, with around 11 percent of men engaging with the popular social video app aged between 25 and 34 years.

In 2024, the share of Swedish internet users who were born in the 2000s who used TikTok amounted to 63 percent. Out of Swedish online audiences born in the 2010s, about 30 percent used the social video app. Overall, TikTok was used by approximately 17 percent of the Swedish online population in the last examined year.

As of February 2025, approximately 44.3 percent of TikTok global users were women. By comparison, male users on the popular social video platform were 55.7 percent of the total. TikTok generated 186 million downloads from global users during the last quarter of 2024. TikTok’s popularity TikTok's popularity continues to expand globally, with countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia presenting a reach of virtually over 100 percent as of the end of 2023. In October 2023, the social video platform boasted over 1.2 billion active monthly users, of which United States users represented the largest audience worldwide. U.S. users were particularly active on the platform, spending 32 percent of their online time engaging with TikTok as of February 2023. TikTok’s global revenue TikTok rapidly increased its revenue in the past years. In the third quarter of 2023, TikTok generated 681 million U.S. dollars in revenues from users worldwide. In 2024, it is projected that the social video platform will reach global ad revenue close to 18.5 billion.

As of February 2025, the United States was the region with the largest TikTok audience by far, with almost 135.79 million users engaging with the popular social video platform. Indonesia followed, with around 107.7 million TikTok users. Brazil came in third, with almost 91.75 million users on TikTok watching short-videos. From Reels to Shorts: social short video takes the internet Between 2021 and 2022 some of the most popular social media platforms have been adding short-video features on the heels of TikTok’s popularity. YouTube Shorts, which rolled out to the global market in June 2021, reached two billion monthly active logged-in users in 2023. In comparison, Instagram’s short-video format Reels, which launched in August 2020, presented a higher view rate than regular videos on the platform between June 2021 and June 2022, as well as a higher likes rate than other content types on Instagram. TikTok business model TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, along with the short-video app Douyin (TikTok’s version for the Chinese market), video platform Xigua, and popular news app Toutiao. While the products intended for domestic market consumption operate in the Chinese digital ecosystem and have a plurality of established monetization methods such as a live-shopping events hosted by famous influencers, TikTok’s main revenue stream comes from online advertising. In 2022, TikTok was estimated to have generated around four billion U.S. dollars worldwide via online advertising.

The reach by social network in the 'TikTok' segment of the digital advertising market in Europe was forecast to continuously increase between 2023 and 2028 by in total 31.6 million users (+12.46 percent). After the tenth consecutive increasing year, the indicator is estimated to reach 285.21 million users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the reach by social network of the 'TikTok' segment of the digital advertising market was continuously increasing over the past years.Find more in-depth information regarding the ad spending concerning the classifieds segment of the digital advertising market in the United Kingdom and the share of revenue generated via mobile purchases concerning the digital advertising mobile segment of the digital advertising market in the Netherlands. The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.

Launched in 2016, TikTok rose to be one of the most popular social app and video platform for global users. In 2021, TikTok had approximately 656 million global users. This figure was projected to increase by around 15 percent year-over-year, reaching 755 million users in 2022. TikTok global installs peaked at the end of 2019, with the app amassing over 318 million downloads. During 2020 and 2021, TikTok download trends experienced a slower growth, amassing 173 million downloads from users worldwide during the last quarter of 2021.

As of April 2024, around 16.5 percent of global active Instagram users were men between the ages of 18 and 24 years. More than half of the global Instagram population worldwide was aged 34 years or younger. Teens and social media As one of the biggest social networks worldwide, Instagram is especially popular with teenagers. As of fall 2020, the photo-sharing app ranked third in terms of preferred social network among teenagers in the United States, second to Snapchat and TikTok. Instagram was one of the most influential advertising channels among female Gen Z users when making purchasing decisions. Teens report feeling more confident, popular, and better about themselves when using social media, and less lonely, depressed and anxious. Social media can have negative effects on teens, which is also much more pronounced on those with low emotional well-being. It was found that 35 percent of teenagers with low social-emotional well-being reported to have experienced cyber bullying when using social media, while in comparison only five percent of teenagers with high social-emotional well-being stated the same. As such, social media can have a big impact on already fragile states of mind.

In February 2024, adults in the United States aged between 18 and 24, spent 186 minutes per day engaging with social media platforms. In comparison, respondents aged 65 and older dedicated approximately 102 minutes of their day to social media. TikTok was the most engaging social media platform for U.S. consumers aged between 18 and 24 years. The popular video was also the most engaging among users aged 35 and 54 years, commanding between 45 and 50 minutes of users' daily attention. Respondents aged between 55 and 65, reported to spending between 45 minutes daily on Facebook.

As of September 2023, 29 percent of Facebook users in the United States were aged 30 to 39 years, while a further 29 percent of users were aged 50 to 64 years, making these demographics the biggest audiences of the online network in the country. Meta’s Instagram was also popular among users aged 30 to 39 years, who accounted for 32 percent of the audience of the photo-based platform, while those aged 18 to 29 years accounted for another third of the network’s U.S. users. Overall, TikTok and Snapchat were the most popular social media platforms amongst younger audiences, while LinkedIn was the least used platform by those aged 18 to 29 in the United States as of 2023.

The social media market in the United States

The number of social media users in the United States has shown continuous growth in the past years, and it is forecast to continue increasing to reach 342 million users in 2029. As of 2023, the social network user penetration in the United States amounted to an impressive 91.56 percent, meaning that more than nine in ten people in the country engaged with online platforms. Furthermore, Facebook was by far the most popular social media platform in the United States, accounting for 45 percent of all social media visits in 2023, followed by Pinterest with 21.2 percent of visits.

The global social media landscape

As of April 2024, 5.07 billion people were social media users, accounting for 62.6 percent of the world’s population. Northern Europe was the region with the highest social media penetration rate with a reach of 80.2 percent, followed by Western Europe with 78.2 percent and Eastern Asia 74.9 percent. In contrast, less than one in ten people in Middle Africa used social networks. Facebook’s popularity is not limited to the United States: this network leads the market on a global scale, and it accumulated more than three billion monthly active users (MAU) as of 2024, which is far more any other social media platform. 272014 YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp followed, all with two billion or more MAU.