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.

In 2023, social video app TikTok had approximately 102 million users in the United States. This figure is projected to increase by over five percent year-over-year, reaching 107.8 million users in 2024. TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media apps in the United States and especially popular with younger digital audiences.

TikTok has a significantly larger female user base globally.

Tiktok network graph with 5,638 nodes and 318,986 unique links, representing up to 790,599 weighted links between labels, using Gephi network analysis software.

Source of:

Peña-Fernández, Simón, Larrondo-Ureta, Ainara, & Morales-i-Gras, Jordi. (2022). Current affairs on TikTok. Virality and entertainment for digital natives. Profesional De La Información, 31(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5962655

Abstract:

Since its appearance in 2018, TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms among digital natives because of its algorithm-based engagement strategies, a policy of public accounts, and a simple, colorful, and intuitive content interface. As happened in the past with other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, various media are currently seeking ways to adapt to TikTok and its particular characteristics to attract a younger audience less accustomed to the consumption of journalistic material. Against this background, the aim of this study is to identify the presence of the media and journalists on TikTok, measure the virality and engagement of the content they generate, describe the communities created around them, and identify the presence of journalistic use of these accounts. For this, 23,174 videos from 143 accounts belonging to media from 25 countries were analyzed. The results indicate that, in general, the presence and impact of the media in this social network are low and that most of their content is oriented towards the creation of user communities based on viral content and entertainment. However, albeit with a lesser presence, one can also identify accounts and messages that adapt their content to the specific characteristics of TikTok. Their virality and engagement figures illustrate that there is indeed a niche for current affairs on this social network.

These TikTok user statistics tell the whole story of the new social media giant and give you some insights into the app's future.

In 2021, TikTok increased its U.S. user base by over 29 percent compared to the previous year. Audience growth of the social video platform is projected to remain in double digits until 2021, before slowing down to a 8.1 percent annual user growth rate in 2022. In 2021, TikTok had 86.9 million users in the United States.

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 has 102.3 million monthly active users in the US alone. This is forecasted to reach 121.1 million by 2027.

Teenagers make up the largest group of active users on TikTok.

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 chart presents the number of trademark take-down requests received by TikTok and the number of succesfull take-downs in 2021. The TikTok Community Guidelines and Terms of Service prohibit content that infringes third party intellectual property. When valid take-down requests based on violations of copyright law and trademark law are received by the platform from the right holders, TikTok removes the alleged infringing content in a timely manner. There is a breakdown in data for the first half of 2021 and the data for the two periods are not directly comparable. In the period January - April 2021, data includes all trademark take-down notices received by the platform, while since May 2021, the data includes only valid trademark take-down notices. Valid trademark take-down notices are notices that provide sufficient information to assess if there has been trademark infringement according to applicable law.

In 2021, the global number of first-time installs of the video app TikTok reached 740 million, down by approximately 24.5 percent from the previous year. Between 2018 and the end of 2021, the social video platform's annual installs were up 13 percent from 655 million first-time installs in 2018.

The average adult TikTok user in America spends 33 minutes per day on the app.

In 2022, TikTok generated four billion U.S. dollars in advertising revenue. This figure is expected to double by 2024 and more nearly quadruple by 2026.

TikTok marketers are digging into their pockets

TikTok was the most downloaded mobile app worldwide in 2021, and the massive appeal of the short-form video platform has not gone unnoticed by advertisers. Over the last few years, more brands have started leveraging TikTok’s impressive reach and engagement figures to boost brand awareness and foster relationships with young, mostly Gen Z, customers. And even though the new kid on the block cannot yet match Facebook’s advertising revenues, it is becoming more appealing each year. As of 2021, TikTok’s revenue in the U.S. amounted to 2.1 billion U.S. dollars, which translated to roughly one percent of total digital ad spending in the country. This share is expected to increase steadily over the next few years.

Brands on TikTok

Advertising on TikTok can open many doors for companies, especially those wanting to reach young (and previously hard to target) audiences. Videos posted on the app can go viral overnight and reach millions of online users, which is something that other social media apps are unable to deliver. In 2021, Netflix was the most talked about brand on TikTok, with more than 4.5 thousand influencers mentioning it. In addition to posting videos and teasers for their upcoming releases, the streaming giant frequently partners with creators and launches challenges on the app.

In September 2021, social video app TikTok reported 1 billion monthly active users worldwide, representing a 45 percent growth compared to the previously reported figure of 689 million MAU in July 2020. TikTok is one of the biggest social networks worldwide.

Globally the average user spends 52 minutes on TikTok every day. About 90% of their worldwide users access TikTok on a daily basis.

Regional TikTok user statistics differentiate significantly. Each major region has also experienced growth a different times.

This bar chart displays news by classification using the aggregation count and is filtered where the news title includes TikTok.

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. 

The chart presents the distribution of videos removed from TikTok, found in violation of the community guidelines, for the period January 2021 to April 2022. The report shows the efforts of TikTok to limit the spread of COVID-19 disinformation online and it is part of the European Commission's Code of Practice on Disinformation monitoring process. The data covers all European Union countries.