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Pew Research has shared some new data on TikTok usage in the U.S., and how Americans are interacting with the Chinese-owned app.
Though there are some provisos to consider in this dataset. The insights are based on survey responses from 2,745 U.S. adult TikTok users, as well as usage data from 869 people who “volunteered to share their account handle for research purposes”.
Given that there are more than 150 million U.S. TikTok users in total, this is a tiny fraction of the platform’s audience (0.0018%), while Pew’s sampling methodology also aims to represent an expanded breadth of users from different ages and backgrounds. And given TikTok’s popularity among younger users, that could mean that this data is not entirely indicative of the behaviors among its most active cohort.
But as a generalized sample, this does give some perspective on certain key trends. It just may not be as indicative for TikTok’s specific user subsets and audiences as it seems.
First off, Pew’s data shows that the top 25% of U.S. adults on TikTok produce some 98% of all publicly accessible videos from this group.
That’s not particularly unusual. The top 20% of X users also produce 100% of its content, and that trend has actually become even more pronounced over time, as people have moved away from public posting in favor of sharing in more private communities (like message groups). As such, a fraction of each platform’s users produce the vast majority of content, though TikTok’s participatory approach to trends does seem to lend itself to more engagement in this respect.
Maybe, on balance, 25% is actually higher than normal in the modern social media landscape.
Pew’s data also shows that around 52% of U.S. adults on TikTok have ever posted a video on the platform, while most users get more value out of their “For You” feed, as opposed to their own following list.
“The median U.S. adult user follows 154 other accounts but has just 36 accounts who follow them – and has received no likes from other users.”
That’s indicative of the broader shift that TikTok has led within social media more broadly, in moving away from a more enclosed, curated following approach, and towards a broader-reaching, algorithm-defined experience.
“Some 85% of TikTok users say the content on their “For You” page is at least somewhat interesting, including 40% who call it either extremely or very interesting. Only 14% say it is not too or not at all interesting.”
I don’t know, these are some interesting insights, I guess, but the sampling, in TikTok’s case, given the widely varying ways in which different groups use the app, seems to make this less valuable as an indicator of key usage habits.
TikTok, as noted, has over 150 million U.S. users, and has become an extremely important and influential platform among younger cohorts in particular. In that respect, it might be more interesting to see a wider-ranging analysis of how youngsters are using the app, as opposed to a more generalized view, which I’m not sure is reflective of its importance.
As a broad-ranging overview, this does provide some insight. I’m just not sure that focusing on all Americans would be as valuable as a more specific, targeted report on youngsters in this instance.
You can read Pew Research’s full TikTok usage report here.
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