TikTok is becoming more inescapable, whether you like it or not. The app (and its viewers) are larger than ever after a historically successful 2021.
TikTok may be best known as a platform for Gen Z dance challenges, but it also hosts a wide variety of material and communities. With the advent of in-app purchasing in 2021, it is now more important than ever for businesses to establish personal relationships with their target audiences.
Here are the most important TikTok statistics to remember as you plot out your 2022 marketing plan for the platform.
1. In 2021, 656 million people downloaded the app TikTok.
In comparison, Instagram was downloaded 545 million times last year, for a difference of more than 100 million.
Moreover, this is TikTok’s third consecutive year as the most popular video-sharing app. In 2019, it was downloaded 693 million times, and in 2020, that number will rise to 850 million. Like many other applications on the list, it had a significant reduction in downloads throughout the globe from the previous year but still managed to maintain its number one position.
TikTok was also the most downloaded app in the United States in 2021, with 94 million downloads, a 6 percent increase over the previous year, as reported by Apptopia.
TikTok also maintained its position as the highest-earning app, with over $2.5 billion in user spending in 2021.
2. TikTok has been downloaded over 3 billion times.
In July of 2021, 3 billion downloads were made of the popular app TikTok. It’s even more remarkable when they hit two billion downloads in less than a year before.
It also marks the first time an app other than Facebook has been downloaded 3 billion times. Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp are the only other applications that have done so since January 2014.
TikTok is the seventh-most downloaded app of the 2010s, despite having just been released in 2016.
3. TikTok is the world’s sixth most popular social media network.
Only Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, and WeChat are more popular. As of 2021, it is ranked sixth, one spot higher than Facebook Messenger.
Yet there is another perspective from which to examine these charts. Eighth on the list is Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok. ByteDance, the parent firm, introduced Douyin in September 2016, then in 2017, they released TikTok to a worldwide audience. The two applications are similar in appearance and operation, with minor differences.
Douyin has about 600 million active users daily (most apps use monthly figures). You jump to the fourth position with both applications above Instagram and WeChat.
4. Adults in the United States have conflicting feelings about TikTok.
In the United States, 34% of respondents have negative views about the app TikTok, while 37% have positive ones. Instagram is more divisive than other social networks, with half of the respondents giving it a positive review and a quarter giving it a negative review. Fifty-five percent of people have a positive impression of Facebook, while just 39 percent have a negative one.
Naturally, this changes with age. Fifty-nine percent of those between the ages of 18 and 34 have a positive impression of TikTok, but just 40 percent of those between the ages of 35 and 44 and 31 percent of those between the ages of 45 and 64 do. People over the age of 50 tend to have greater doubts about the site than those under the age of 30.
This trepidation might be due to the platform’s background of upsetting material. TikTok was the site of choice for a massive hoax concerning school violence in December 2021, which frightened parents and students. Videos advocating quick weight reduction are only one kind of scam and hazardous material that has gained popularity on the network and attracted condemnation.
As a result, in February 2022, TikTok will implement new safety measures by updating its Community Guidelines. They’ve promised to eliminate anything harmful, such as posts encouraging extremist views or behaviors like binge eating, violence, or self-harm.
5. TikTok has nearly one billion active monthly users.
TikTok’s quick growth is an understatement. On average, 650,000 new users join TikTok daily, or eight new users every second. Nothing to see here, just Helsinki’s whole population joining up every day.
The total soon becomes rather large. ByteDance, the firm that owns TikTok, said in September 2021 that the app has 1 billion users, up 45 percent from July 2020. TikTok reached a billion subscribers in under five years, whereas it took Facebook and YouTube a combined eight. By the end of 2022, it is predicted that TikTok will have 1.5 billion users.
6. TikTok users are engaged on other social media sites.
The average monthly use for individuals between 18 and 34 across all social media platforms is 8. Users of TikTok aren’t any different, with 99.99 percent saying they use other social media sites.
Facebook (84.6 percent), Instagram (83.9 percent), and YouTube (83.8 percent) are where you’re most likely to come across TikTok users (80.5 percent overlap).
7. TikTok is currently more popular than Instagram among US Gen Z users.
TikTok’s 37.3 million U.S. users outnumber Instagram’s 33.3 million, making it the app of choice among Generation Z (those born between 1997 and 2012).
In the first quarter of 2021, 36% of TikTok users were between the ages of 35 and 54, up from 26% in the same period in 2020.
By 2025, it’s projected that Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat will all have nearly the same amount of users, despite Snapchat’s continued dominance among Generation Z.
8. The majority of TikTok’s users are female.
Females make up 57% of TikTok’s user population across the world. TikTok users in the United States increased that percentage to 61%.
Even if TikTok’s audience is becoming more diverse, marketers targeting young women will still likely have the most success.
9. No user demographic favors TikTok as their preferred app.
Only 4.3% of internet users favored TikTok over all other social media sites. This is fewer than a third of those who preferred Instagram (14.8%) or Facebook (14.5%).
And despite TikTok being often believed to be the preferred platform of Generation Z users, it ranks lower than its competitors among the youngest demographic. Instagram is the preferred platform for 22.8% of male and 25.6% of female users between the ages of 16 and 24. Females in this age group were 8.9% less likely than males to choose TikTok as their primary social media platform.
10. Android users spend 19.6 hours each month on TikTok.
Compared to Android users in 2020, who spent 13.3 hours per month using the app, this is a 47 percent increase in time spent.
TikTok is the second most popular social media platform, just after Facebook. YouTube continues to dominate, with users devoting an average of 23.7 hours a month to the site.
The term is used in different ways in different nations. The typical user from the United Kingdom spends 27.3 hours per month on TikTok. TikTok users in the United States spend an average of 25.6 hours per month on the app, surpassing the 22.6 hours spent by Canadians.
11. TikTok is by far the most engaging social networking app.
Anyone who has launched TikTok to watch a single video and found themselves immersed in the app for a whole hour is a living, breathing testament to the app’s ability to hold users’ attention. Compared to other social media applications, TikTok has the longest average user session length at 10.85 minutes.
That’s almost twice as long as Pinterest, which comes in at second place with an average session length of 5.06 minutes. It’s also much longer than the average Instagram session duration of 2.95 minutes.
12. Most individuals use TikTok to locate funny/entertaining material.
As part of a poll for the 2022 GlobalWebIndex, users were asked how they use TikTok most often, and the most common response was “to locate funny/entertaining material.”
The second most popular activity is posting/sharing material, and the third is reading the news. Instagram and Snapchat, on the other hand, were mostly used for sharing media. Given its popularity, it’s reasonable to assume that TikTok’s main selling point is the fun it provides its users.
Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, and Snapchat are some more places people go to discover humorous or interesting stuff online. However, just two applications, TikTok and Reddit, fared well in this category.
