TikTok, the social network created in 2016, is now a global phenomenon available in over 150 countries and more than 50 languages.
Primarily appealing to the younger generation, the video application is conquering other areas and is on its way to becoming the #1 platform.
TikTok, with its impressive statistics, attracts a wide audience, including a diverse group of users. TikTok's followers are witness to the constant evolution of media on the platform. Monthly statistics show sustained growth, making TikTok a must-have in social media strategies for brands and marketers worldwide!
Bloggers and content creators use dedicated applications to analyze their audience and statistics. This platform is revolutionizing the way video content is created and consumed, and products and emerging trends are closely monitored through detailed statistical analysis with valuable insights for monthly campaigns.
As TikTok Mania continues, discover all the key TikTok figures and statistics to decipher and anticipate tomorrow's trends to boost your chances of success on the social media platform and earn the highest user engagement rate possible!
What is TikTok?
History of TikTok
Are you familiar with Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor? This unique app was founded in China, specifically in Shanghai, in 2014 by entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang, two long-time friends. The company itself is called Musical.ly Inc.
The story goes that the basic concept of the app was related to learning and education, especially for translating song lyrics into sign language, according to the Musical.ly Wikipedia page.
The use of the application rapidly shifted to dance and singing content: users filmed themselves either to participate in choreographies that went viral or to create short “karaoke” or “lip-sync” videos involving music lyrics or dialogue from movies or comedians.
In 2015, the application was launched in the US, and very quickly, users showed their enthusiasm, especially in terms of longer usage time than on other platforms by teenagers.
Then, 2016 marked the birth of a new application, Douyin, in China, created by the Chinese company Bytedance. One year after its creation, this social network had 100 million users and expanded internationally in 2017 under the name TikTok, but it still remains known as Douyin in China.
In November 2017, Bytedance bought Musical.ly for an estimated $1 billion, though we don’t know the exact figure of this transaction.
Using TikTok is not the same as other social media networks. The collaborative and instantaneous aspect as well as the various challenges have quickly won over a global audience.
During 2020 and following the various global lockdowns, the application experienced unprecedented growth and engagement. The Guardian highlighted that this rapid growth was driven by the arrival of influencers from other platforms and celebrities on TikTok, thus motivating users to sign up and follow them.
How does TikTok work?
TikTok is based on sharing short videos. Video content was originally limited to a few seconds, but now it's possible to share videos of up to 10 minutes. This extension has had a significant impact on audience statistics, with followers becoming more engaged with longer videos.
Initially, choreography, songs and jokes were popular content, if not the only real performers on the platform, according to data achieved via statistical analysis. These trends were clearly reflected in TikTok's monthly statistics.
Then, in 2019, the first popular TikTokers began to appear, offering new and diverse content. Brands also started on the social media platform, understanding the challenges of using the app to reach a wider audience. They began to integrate TikTok into their social media strategies, bringing in TikTok ideas for new content, analyzing their data and statistics to optimize their impact. This approach led to a diversification of products and advertising strategies on the app, towards a wider and more diverse audience.
TikTok revenue
According to data from the TikTok Report 2024 by Business of Apps, here's a list of how much revenue TikTok has earned each year since 2017:
- 2017: $63 million
- 2018: $150 million (+138%)
- 2019: $350 million (+133%)
- 2020: $1.9 billion (+443%)
- 2021: $4.6 billion (+142%)
- 2022: $9.4 billion (+104%)
- 2023: $14.3 billion (+52%)
In terms of growth, TikTok generated a 138% increase in revenue between 2017 and 2018, 133% between 2018 and 2019.
However, the boom was created between the year 2019 and 2020: a growth rate of approximately 443% for the Chinese application, an international explosion that’s only just beginning at this key moment, an impressive statistic of public engagement and a growing interest in TikTok content and its applications.
Key TikTok user demographics
How many TikTok users are there today?
History: In Q3 2021, TikTok broke the mark of one billion users worldwide.
This meteoric rise, however, required a few steps before shattering its record.
As App Annie reports, at the beginning of 2018, the app was still in the early stages of its journey and didn’t have 200 million active users. It took until the third quarter of the same year to finally reach that milestone.
Thus, between the year 2018 and the year 2021, the evolution of the number of subscribers was +400% in 3 years, a feat never before achieved in the universe of social networks.
In 2022, TikTok reached an estimated 1.7 billion users around the world, according to Statista. This figure is predicted to climb to 2.25 billion users by 2027.
What age group uses TikTok the most?
It's no secret that TikTok is known for its young audience. In fact, more than a third of TikTok users are under the age of 25.
According to the TikTok Report from Business of Apps, which uses data from App Ape, global audiences were broken down as follows in 2023:
- 18–24 years old: 36.8%
- 25–34 years old: 32.6%
- 35–44 years old: 16%
- 45–54 years old: 8.3%
- Over 55 years old: 6.3%
However, despite the typical age of TikTok users initially being rather low, with the app being most popular with Gen Z and millennials, TikTok in a phase of mutation and is attracting an increasing number of people in the higher age groups.
TikTok gender statistics
When it comes to the gender of people using TikTok, there's currently a slightly higher percentage of male users than female users on the platform, with the gender breakdown in 2023 being as follows:
- Male: 51.1%
- Female: 48.9%
Countries with the most TikTok users
Although India previously held the top spot in terms of countries with the greatest number of TikTok users, India launched a complete ban on the app in 2020, removing it from the running. As of January 2024, the US has the most TikTok users, with just under 150 million people using the social network, according to Statista. Indonesia and Brazil come in second and third place, with 126 million users and almost 99 million users respectfully.
TikTok download statistics
Number of TikTok downloads around the world
The TikTok app has been downloaded more than 4 billion times, and it was the first app besides Facebook to attain the milestone of 3 billion downloads in 2021. In just a few years, TikTok has established itself as a sensation, achieving a little over 232 million downloads worldwide in Q4 2023 alone.
As you can see from the Statista graph below, the times when the social media app was most downloaded were, unsurprisingly, during the first two quarters of 2020, with a peak of around 313 million downloads for the first quarter.
Source: Statista
TikTok's download popularity compared to other apps
Furthermore, a Business of Apps study determined that TikTok was the #2 downloaded app globally in 2023, coming in just behind Instagram.
TikTok usage statistics
Average time spent on TikTok
Although, in 2020, lockdowns optimized the time users spent on the TikTok application, the global average is now 95 minutes of browsing on the application per day as of Q2 2022. This is over 20 minutes longer than YouTube, which ranks second in terms of average time spent on social media platforms.
In addition, 90% of users open the app at least once a day, and the average open rate is nine times a day, according to Alioze.
How people use TikTok
Although TikTok is primarily known as a platform for watching and sharing videos for entertainment, a growing number of people are using the app for news, particularly users based in the US. A 2023 study by Pew Research notes that 43% of American TikTokers get their news from the social media platform on a regular basis. This is a 10% increase from the percentage of users who stated the same in 2022.
Another TikTok use that's quickly increasing in popularity is the use of the platform as a search engine. According to Adobe, more than 40% of Americans have used TikTok as a search engine, looking to source new recipes, new products or services, music, fashion tips, DIY advice, workout routines, movie recommendations, etc. Gen Z and millennials are most likely to use the app for this purpose, with 64% and 49% of them respectively having already done so. In fact, almost 10% of Gen Zers would rather turn to TikTok than Google for their searching needs.
Preferred content on TikTok
When it comes to the types of content people like to see on TikTok, it seems that humor is the winner with active users.
In a recent GWI survey, 60% of respondents said they enjoy watching funny content on TikTok. Creative and relaxing content are also in demand, with 45% and 37% of users wanting to view these kinds of videos on the social media platform.
Source: GWI
Top user interests on TikTok
As of July 2020, based on the the number of hashtag views, TikTok users’ interests are mostly concentrated around entertainment, dance, and humorous content, before sports, handmade creations, and beauty.
Source: Statista
TikTok influencers
Where the most popular TikTok content creators are based
Statista lists the countries with the most popular TikTokers in 2020, i.e., accounts followed by more than 1,000 subscribers.
The US comes out on top with 12.71% of accounts, ahead of India with 7.77% and Turkey with 2.8%.
Top TikTok influencers worldwide
Who are the most popular influencers on TikTok today? As of March 2024, Khabane Lame (@khaby.lame) wins the #1 spot with 161.4 million followers. Here are the rest of the active TikTok users rounding out the Top 10 accounts with the highest number of followers worldwide, based on data from Social Blade.
Conclusion
Unlike Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or Snapchat, TikTok is a unique platform in that it’s based only on video. None of the other social networks allows such freedom: the algorithm, very open, still allows content creators to share spontaneous videos, in line with the times, without having to sponsor their posts to have the chance to be visible.
Although timing does play a role in a user's success on TikTok, as it's important to share videos when other users in your target audience are more apt to be active, the main condition for a Tiktok video to work is to have strong and original content. The easiest way to perform well on the platform is to be present and interact with your followers.
So, if you want to add TikTok to your brand's marketing strategy, you’ll have to stay on top of the trends and challenges to try to create and share videos at the highest rate possible at your level. Unlike other social media networks that require users to create photos and videos using very specific regulations, the creation on TikTok is freer: take advantage of it for your brand's marketing efforts!
Learn all about the key statistics on other social media platforms by checking out our other articles:
