According to the latest data on TikTok's advertising reach, the United States is home to the majority of TikTok users worldwide, with 116.5 million TikTokers residing there.
TikTok's growth strong despite Western bans: Asia-Pacific sees nearly 60% of world's social network users.
TikTok is a special place where Americans come together to learn, be entertained, grow their business, as they continue to create, discover and connect with a broader global community.
TikTok's ad audience can reach around 43.4 million Filipino adults who use the app—around 37.3 percent of the country's population is among the app's ad audience, according to an analysis by DataReportal.
The app was launched in 2016 by the Chinese technology company ByteDance. Now available in more than 150 different markets, TikTok has offices in Beijing; Los Angeles; Moscow; Mumbai, India; Seoul, South Korea; and Tokyo. The app saw about 1 billion global daily users by early 2022.
Douyin. Douyin was launched by ByteDance in Beijing, China in September 2016, originally under the name A.me, before rebranding to Douyin (抖音) in December 2016. Douyin was developed in 200 days and within a year had 100 million users, with more than one billion videos viewed every day.
TikTok, which has over 150 million American users, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd., which appoints its executives. ByteDance is based in Beijing but registered in the Cayman Islands, as is common for privately owned Chinese companies.
Southeast Asia, a region with a collective population of 630 million – half of them under 30 – is one of TikTok's biggest markets in terms of user numbers, generating more than 325 million visitors to the app every month.
The world's biggest social media platforms
Facebook has 2.963 billion monthly active users (see more Facebook stats here) YouTube's potential advertising reach is 2.527 billion. WhatsApp has at least 2 billion monthly active users. Instagram has 2 billion monthly active users (see more Instagram stats here)
As of April 2023, the United States was the country with the largest TikTok audience by far, with approximately 117 million users engaging with the popular social video platform. Indonesia followed, with around 113 million TikTok users. Brazil came in third, with almost 85 million users on TikTok watching short-videos.
“We regularly educate creators about our policies because it takes a village to create a space where everyone feels welcome and safe.” The 18+ filter is not the only tactic TikTok is employing as it attempts to make its For You Feeds safe for viewers of all ages.
Instead, there's a different version of TikTok — a sister app called Douyin. Both are owned by Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, but Douyin launched before TikTok and became a viral sensation in China. Its powerful algorithm became the foundation for TikTok and is key to its global success.
Fact: TikTok's parent company ByteDance Ltd. was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs, but today, roughly sixty percent of the company is beneficially owned by global institutional investors such as Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, and Susquehanna International Group.
With a monthly user base of 12.6 million and growing, TikTok Japan has become a good marketing tool for those seeking to tap into a younger demographic.
There were 54.5 million Internet users in Thailand in January 2022, equivalent to about 78 per cent of the total population, according to DataReportal. While Facebook is the most popular, with more than 50 million accounts in the country, TikTok is also widely used, with nearly 36 million users.
Among leading social platforms, the networks with the highest growth rates between 2020 and 2022 were TikTok/Douyin, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest and Twitter.
Meta Platforms owns four of the biggest social media platforms, all with over one billion monthly active users each: Facebook (core platform), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. In the final quarter of 2022, Facebook reported over 3.7 billion monthly core Family product users.
Facebook – 6 hours. LinkedIn – 24 hours. Instagram – 48 hours. YouTube – About 20 days.
TikTok remains teens' most favored social media platform so far in 2023, though its favorability fell one percentage point from the fall of 2022 with a 37% share, according to Piper Sandler's Spring 2023 Taking Stock with Teens survey. Behind TikTok is Snap (27%) and Instagram (23%).
This short-video platform has the largest number of users in China (over 730 million at the end of 2022). According to Douyin, its users range from teachers based in rural China who record the impoverished living conditions that many local children face, to laid-off Chinese workers making a living live streaming.
First, while TikTok may be America's most downloaded app, it's far from the only Chinese-owned app that Americans use regularly. Temu, CapCut (which is also owned by ByteDance), and SHEIN also made the most downloaded list.
Already, bans on using the app in government have taken effect at the state level. More than half of U.S. states have banned state employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices and a number of U.S. universities have barred it from their WiFi networks. Worth noting: TikTok doesn't operate inside China.
TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance, the world's most valuable start-up. Numerous countries have raised concerns over its proximity to the Chinese government and hold over user data across the world. Banned TikTok from all federal government-owned devices over security concerns.
"TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one were ever made," CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify on Thursday, according to written testimony posted on Tuesday by the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee.