In the fourth quarter of 2024, TikTok generated around 186 million downloads from users worldwide. Initially launched in China first by ByteDance as Douyin, the short-video format was popularized by TikTok and took over the global social media environment in 2020. In the first quarter of 2020, TikTok downloads peaked at over 313.5 million worldwide, up by 62.3 percent compared to the first quarter of 2019.

              TikTok interactions: is there a magic formula for content success?

              In 2024, TikTok registered an engagement rate of approximately 4.64 percent on video content hosted on its platform. During the same examined year, the social video app recorded over 1,100 interactions on average. These interactions were primarily composed of likes, while only recording less than 20 comments per piece of content on average in 2024.
              The platform has been actively monitoring the issue of fake interactions, as it removed around 236 million fake likes during the first quarter of 2024. Though there is no secret formula to get the maximum of these metrics, recommended video length can possibly contribute to the success of content on TikTok.
              It was recommended that tiny TikTok accounts with up to 500 followers post videos that are around 2.6 minutes long as of the first quarter of 2024. While, the ideal video duration for huge TikTok accounts with over 50,000 followers was 7.28 minutes. The average length of TikTok videos posted by the creators in 2024 was around 43 seconds.

              What’s trending on TikTok Shop?

              Since its launch in September 2023, TikTok Shop has become one of the most popular online shopping platforms, offering consumers a wide variety of products. In 2023, TikTok shops featuring beauty and personal care items sold over 370 million products worldwide.
              TikTok shops featuring womenswear and underwear, as well as food and beverages, followed with 285 and 138 million products sold, respectively. Similarly, in the United States market, health and beauty products were the most-selling items,
              accounting for 85 percent of sales made via the TikTok Shop feature during the first month of its launch. In 2023, Indonesia was the market with the largest number of TikTok Shops, hosting over 20 percent of all TikTok Shops. Thailand and Vietnam followed with 18.29 and 17.54 percent of the total shops listed on the famous short video platform, respectively.

During a 2025 survey among marketers worldwide, around 83 percent reported using Facebook for marketing purposes. Instagram and LinkedIn followed, respectively mentioned by 78 and 69 percent of the respondents. The global social media marketing segment According to the same study, 60 percent of responding marketers intended to increase their organic use of YouTube for marketing purposes throughout that year. LinkedIn and Instagram followed with similar shares, rounding up the top three social media platforms attracting a planned growth in organic use among global marketers in 2025. Their main driver is increasing brand exposure and traffic, which led the ranking of benefits of social media marketing worldwide. Social media for B2B marketing Social media platform adoption rates among business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) marketers vary according to each subsegment's focus. While B2C professionals prioritize Facebook and Instagram, both run by Meta, Inc., due to their popularity among online audiences, B2B marketers concentrate their endeavors on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn due to its goal to connect people and companies in a corporate context.

As of October 2025, **** percent of TikTok's global audience were women between the ages of 18 and 24 years, while male users of the same age formed **** percent of the platform's audience. The online audience of the popular social video platform was further composed of **** percent of female users aged between 25 and 34 years and **** percent of male users in the same age group.

With approximately 1.6 billion video views in March 2019, LADbible was ranked first among the most watched Facebook video publishers. Second-ranked UNILAD generated 1.6 billion video views. Both social news and entertainment publishers are owned by the British media company The LADbible Group Ltd.

Social video consumption Watching a video on the likes of Facebook or Instagram is now part of everyday social media usage. Whilst YouTube is as popular as ever, it is no longer the only source out there for online video viewers. With companies and influencers utilizing video for marketing purposes on Instagram, concertgoers broadcasting the event to their friends via Facebook Live and Twitter users endlessly retweeting their favorite vlogs, video content on social is here to stay. Social media is an important channel for video producers and many traditional media brands have started to generate content specifically to be distributed and discussed on social platforms. News, ads, viral moments, celebrity vlogs, sporting clips – the variety of video clips on social media is seemingly endless and users are highly engaged with video content on Facebook. As of February 2018, Facebook ranked first among social video platforms, accounting for a significant share of social media video posts across all tiers of influencers. The network accounted for 50 percent of social video posts by celebrity influencers with more than 20 million followers.

Mobile social video
A significant chunk of social video is consumed via mobile. One of the most popular mobile video apps is TikTok, which has over 3.7 million monthly active users in the United States. TikTok is a mobile app for creating and sharing short videos, which also can be edited in-app. The app merged with Musical.ly in August 2018, thus gaining access to the teenage online user market in the United States. Popular types of TikTok videos include dances, comedy sketches or lip-synchs to songs. The platform is frequently considered the spiritual successor to the now-defunct mobile video app Vine, and popular TikTok videos are frequently shared across other social networks.

As of February 2025, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 141 minutes per day, down from 143 minutes in the previous year. Currently, the country with the most time spent on social media per day is Brazil, with online users spending an average of 3 hours and 49 minutes on social media each day. In comparison, the daily time spent with social media in the U.S. was just 2 hours and 16 minutes. Global social media usage Currently, the global social network penetration rate is 62.3 percent. Northern Europe had an 81.7 percent social media penetration rate, topping the ranking of global social media usage by region. Eastern and Middle Africa closed the ranking with 10.1 and 9.6 percent usage reach, respectively. People access social media for a variety of reasons. Users like to find funny or entertaining content and enjoy sharing photos and videos with friends, but mainly use social media to stay in touch with current events and friends. Global impact of social media Social media has a wide-reaching and significant impact on not only online activities but also offline behavior and life in general. During a global online user survey in February 2019, a significant share of respondents stated that social media had increased their access to information, ease of communication, and freedom of expression. On the flip side, respondents also felt that social media had worsened their personal privacy, increased polarization in politics, and heightened everyday distractions.

In January 2025, YouTube held a market share of **** percent among online social networking platforms in the United Kingdom (UK). Figures were calculated based on approximately fifteen billion hits online per month. YouTube’s reach within the UK In 2021, users in the United Kingdom spent over ** hours per month on the popular social video and streaming platform YouTube, making it the most engaging video platform after TikTok. This made it the most widely used social networks, and one of the more attractive digital advertising tools for marketers. During this period, YouTube was the most popular video app among children in the UK, with ** percent of respondents reporting to engage with this platform. The future of digital advertising A report published in 2019 cited YouTube as the digital platform forecasted to enhance communications in the near future, as advertising shifts to become more visual. YouTube’s worldwide advertising revenues have also increased year on year since 2017, attesting the effectiveness of its monetization methods. The introduction of services such as its Partner Program, which collaborates with leading content creators to earn through in-video-advertising has helped YouTube stay relevant while generating and retaining a large audience base.

This statistic presents the average length of YouTube videos as of December 2018, sorted by category. According to the report, the average video length is at 11.7 minutes. Music content generally had the shortest video length among all categories on the platform, with an average length of 6.8 minutes per video.

****** was the most used social media platforms to watch short-form videos among U.S. users, with approximately ** percent of respondents reporting to use the popular Chinese-developed social media as their preferred platform. ************** ranked second, with ** percent of respondents, while *************** ranked third. ******** ********* only gained the attention of approximately ***** percent of respondents.

This statistic presents the most popular video content categories on YouTube worldwide, ranked by views. As of December 2018, entertainment was the most popular YouTube content category based on video views. The category accounted for 25 percent of public video views on the platform.

The number of short video users in China experienced a sharp rise in the last few years. As of June 2025, the userbase surpassed the *********** mark, which means about **** percent of the Chinese internet users had engaged with such bite-seized content.

Video has become one of the most popular online formats, spanning from educational content to product reviews. As of the second quarter of 2025, music videos recorded the highest category reach, with almost half of internet users worldwide reporting to watch music videos online each week. Social video engagement In recent years, YouTube and TikTok have become two of the most important social media platforms for global users, as video content commands high levels of engagement. In 2024, users worldwide spent approximately 28.4 hours using the YouTube mobile app per month. Additionally, the leading hashtags used by content creators on TikTok have amassed billions of views: as of October 2025, the TikTok hashtags “fyp” or “for you page” had reached 55 and 35 billion post views, respectively. Watching content: what device do users prefer? In 2024, televisions were the most used devices for global viewers to watch video-on-demand (VOD), with 58 percent of respondents reporting using these devices. In comparison, 12 percent of respondents reported using smartphones. Age group and generation are factors impacting viewership habits and device preferences, as younger users appear to prefer using their smartphones to consume content. According to a March 2024 survey, U.S. users aged 18-34 years were more likely to watch video content on smartphones than on any other devices. By comparison, connected TVs were particularly popular for the online video audience aged 35 and older.

In 2022, there were around **** billion social media users in China. Despite Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter being blocked in the country, local social networking sites such as WeChat and Weibo have been attracting millions of users, making China the world’s biggest social media market.

What is the role of social media in China? Around ** percent of the Chinese population use internet. Social networking plays a huge role among netizens, especially the younger generation. Chinese social media, just like Western equivalents, not only serves as a way to communicate online, but also as one of the main sources of news and entertainment, e-payments, shopping advisors, and dating channels. In 2021, over ** percent of surveyed social media users said they mostly appreciated that social networks help them to keep in touch with friends and family, but also share their life moments and thoughts.

What are the most popular social media platforms?

WeChat (Weixin in Chinese) is by far the most commonly seen social app in the country, used for anything from texting/calling to photo and video sharing, dating, financial services, game-playing, shopping, ride hailing, and so on. However, Chinese social media scene is quite diverse and dynamic, therefore, it is not just about WeChat. Instant messaging app Tencent QQ, microblogging site Weibo, video sharing app Youku Tudou, short-form video app Douyin (aka TikTok), photo editing and sharing app Meitu, restaurant recommendation and food ordering platform Meituan, Quora equivalent Zhihu, and dating app Momo are just a few among the most popular Chinese social media examples.

This statistic shows the results of a survey about social media usage and awareness in South Korea in June 2018. According to this survey, almost ** percent of participants stated they primarily consumed funny texts and videos and current hot issues or trends on social media.

In March 2018, the highest number of video posts across Russia was uploaded on the social media platform Odnoklassniki, exceeding *** thousand entries per day. Vkontakte ranked second on the list with about half a million posts posted daily. Surprisingly, Youtube was listed fifth after Facebook and Instagram.

The statistic depicts the annual growth rate of short video users in China from 2016 to 2018. In 2018, the number of short video users was predicted to increase by ** percent compared with the previous year.

This statistic presents the frequency of adults in the United States watching vloggers on social media platforms as of November 2018. According to the findings, 48 percent of respondents stated to never watching vloggers on various platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch. Additionally, only nine percent of respondents reported to viewing vloggers at least several times a week.

In September 2024, the number of monthly active users of short videos in China amounted to **** billion, up *** percent compared to last month. On average, Chinese internet users spent about **** hours on short videos per month.

The graph presents the social network video advertising revenue in the United States from 2017 to 2020, by platform. In 2018, Facebook generated **** billion U.S. dollars in revenue from video advertising. The social media platform is estimated to make **** billion U.S. dollars from video ads in 2020.

Every year billions of dollars are spent on advertising on social media in the United States. In 2022, the amount reached ** billion U.S. dollars, and included paid advertising on social networks as well as games and applications on social media. By 2025, advertisers are expected to spend over ** billion dollars on promoting their products on social networks. Facebook commands the lion’s share of these expenditures (more than ** percent), followed by LinkedIn and Pinterest with * and * percent respectively. Social network advertising – a closer look   Studies show that a little over ** percent of U.S. companies are and will be using social media for marketing purposes. In 2017, social messaging and video were thought to be the trends of the future in relation to social media advertising and believed to have the biggest effect on marketing strategies. Lo and behold, advertising spending on social video has been growing ever since, and is expected to amount to nearly ** billion U.S dollars in 2021. Even in this respect, Facebook has the lead, especially when it comes to influencer marketing. In fact, all tiers of influencers - from microinfluencers to celebrities - post the majority of their videos on Facebook. The second choice of platform to share their videos is YouTube, which despite being 'the' video sharing platform is not as popular yet among influencers most probably due to smaller user reach.

The number of users is forecast to experience significant growth in all segments in 2027. Especially notable is the remarkably robust growth observed in the Video-on-Demand segment as we approach the end of the forecast period. This value, reaching *** million users, stands out significantly compared to the average changes, which are estimated at **** million users. Find other insights concerning similar markets and segments, such as a comparison of average revenue per user (ARPU) in the United States and a comparison of number of users in Poland. The Statista Market Insights cover a broad range of additional markets.