Are you on TikTok?
If you’re under the age of 25, there’s a decent chance the answer is yes. But even if you’re not, the answer might also be yes. The Chinese social media app, also known as Douyin, that lets users create short, 60-second videos and alter them with all sorts of fun special effects, is rapidly taking over the social media scene.
Just a few years ago, it was nothing more than a fun app popular amongst Chinese teens. Now, it is one of the most downloaded apps in the world, making the world’s social media giant — Facebook — look a little more closely in its rearview mirror.
Want to know just how big this TikTok revolution is? Here are ten statistics you must know in 2025.
1. TikTok Currently Has More Than 1 Billion Monthly Users
Although it only launched officially in 2016 and just came to the United States in 2018, TikTok has rapidly become one of the most popular social media websites and apps in the world.
As of 2025, the app has 1.12 billion monthly active users (MAUs), which makes it one of the most popular social media platforms behind Facebook (3.065 billion MAUs), YouTube (2.5 billion MAUs), WhatsApp (2 billion MAUs), Instagram (2 billion MAUs), and WeChat (1.38 billion MAUs).
To give you an idea of just how popular TikTok is, here is how quickly it has grown in the last few years:
One of the main reasons why TikTok grew so much in 2018 and 2019 was its acquisition of Music.ly, a U.S.-based social media service that already had around 80 million users before it was bought.
After the purchase, TikTok migrated all of these accounts over to its own platform, and this helped launch a revolution in the United States and also made TikTok the first Chinese-based app to be majorly successful in the U.S.
2. TikTok Continues to Search for a Buyer
Despite its success among Americans as the fourth most popular social media app in the country, TikTok is in a legal limbo.
A ban against the app was set to go into effect in January 2025 after U.S. lawmakers deemed the app a threat to American data, privacy, and security. According to the law, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance must sell its U.S. operations to a U.S. company or risk going dark forever. The platform was down for roughly 12 hours in January after ByteDance failed to precure a buyer before the ban’s deadline.
President Donald Trump has extended executive orders delaying the ban twice, most recently in April 2025, by 75 days. While a buyer has yet to be announced, the White House continues to advocate for a sale over an outright ban of the app.
3. TikTok Users Around the World
TikTok is originally a Chinese app, and it still gets most of its traffic from the Asia-Pacific region. In fact, around 296.8 million of its users come from Asia-Pacific countries, and around one-quarter of the app’s total downloads come from the Middle East and Africa.
In China, the app is referred to as Douyin. The name TikTok was created once the app decided to expand beyond Chinese borders. For the sake of consistency, it has kept this name in its original market.
While it seems like more Americans are on the app than ever before, North America accounts for a small percentage of the platform’s total users at just 11.8%.
4. The Average TikTok User Spends Nearly an Hour Per Day on the App
Anyone who has ever used TikTok before knows that it can be addicting. Its algorithm has the unique capacity to find videos relevant to you and your interests, and its format of playing video after video keeps you engaged.
This translates to the average user spending around 58 minutes and 24 seconds per day on the app. Users are spend twice the amount of time they were on the app in 2019. The average user spends about 23 hours and 30 minutes on TikTok each month – almost a full day!
5. TikTok is One of the Largest Online Shopping Platforms
What used to be known as “the dancing app” has evolved into one of the world’s largest marketplaces on social media. In 2019, TikTok slowly introduced in-app purchases, which allow users to buy coins and other virtual items that give them special access to content. By 2023, TikTok Shop was introduced to brands and sellers to generate income by uploading curated products for users to discover and buy.
More than 1/3 of American users have purchased or sold an item through TikTok shop, and 68% are open to purchasing through the platform. Americans have spend close to $32 million a day shopping on TikTok. The majority of products sold are health and beauty related.
Watching videos of the product itself has a compelled a significant amount of users to purchase; more than 60% of users have purchased directly through the platform after seeing an advertisement. Nearly half of TikTok shoppers purchase an item once a month, with a majority of users (nearly 75%) claiming to feel a deeper connection to the brands they interact with on TikTok.
6. 16,000 TikTok Videos are Uploaded Each Minute
If you’ve ever wondered why some videos you upload rake in few views and others hit the viewing lottery, it probably has to do with the sheer volume of videos, not just the TikTok algorithm.
Every minute, 16,000 videos are uploaded to the app. That means that, in any given hour, TikTok users upload a little less than a million videos.
However, while these numbers might seem shocking (and kind of are), some context is needed. Each video on TikTok is only 30-60 seconds long, and with more than 1 billion users, it’s easy to see how the number of videos quickly balloons to astronomical numbers, further proof that TikTok very much is the next internet sensation.
7. TikTok Revenue Hits $23 Billion in 2024
As one of the most popular and fastest-growing apps in the world, it comes as no surprise that TikTok is raking in the cash. Still technically a privately-owned company, exact figures are difficult to acquire, but reports claim the app generated about $23 billion revenue in 2024. About 77% of this revenue comes from advertising sales, a strategy used by pretty much every other social media app.
This growth, however, is helping out more than just TikTok.
Its parent company, ByteDance, made about $40 billion in 2024. However, there may be a change of hands soon as U.S. lawmakers ruled to ban the app unless it’s sold to a company in the U.S. or a country deemed friendly to the U.S. Though the deadline for a sale has been extended twice since the start of the year, pressure from the White House indicates a sale will happen sooner rather than later.
8. Most TikTok Users Are Under 34
If you find yourself asking, “What’s a TikTok?” don’t be surprised if younger people laugh at you and call you a boomer. But also don’t feel bad. TikTok is very much a GenZ app. Around 1 in 4 TikTok users are under 20 years old.
Another 35% are between 25-34, and then 19% are between 35 and 44. People over the age of 45 account for around 27% of all TikTok users.
Still, TikTok is very much a young person’s app, and this is part of the reason why it has become so popular in the U.S. Many people from younger generations don’t like Facebook or see it as an app that their parents use. Plus, TikTok is geared towards shorter, quirkier, and more creative videos, which appears to be what the younger generations want more.
9. TikTok Produces High Engagement Rates
Another reason why TikTok is becoming more and more popular is that engagement on the app is much higher than it is with other social media apps. For those who don’t know, engagement refers to when someone likes or shares a post, or when they follow your account after seeing some of your content.
TikTok engagement has seen a dip from previous years but clocks in at an average of 2.5% by follower count. Instagram is close behind with an average engagement rate by follower count at just 0.50%.
10. The Most Followed TikTok Account has More than 160 Million Followers
One thing TikTok is doing more so than any other social media app (except perhaps YouTube) is turning people into stars. Because of its popularity, and also because of how easy it is to produce content, regular people are quickly becoming superstars on the platform.
As of April 1, 2025, the most popular account on TikTok belongs to Khabane Lame with more than 162 million followers. His account is followed by Charli D’Amelio and MrBeast. How long this fame lasts remains to be seen; one aspect of TikTok is that people regularly fall in and out of popularity.
However, given how successful some people have been with the app, it’s likely to encourage more and more individuals to download it and try and find their moment in the spotlight, something that can only improve TikTok’s popularity.
The Next Facebook?
Based on these numbers, it’s clear that TikTok is here to stay. This isn’t just some fad that will die out in a few months. Instead, this app is a legitimate player in the world of social media and just might make a run at the top spots currently held by one of Meta’s four companies. But this is also far from a guarantee. Facebook has been at it for much longer, and TikTok does face the challenge of being based in another country. But if the internet world has taught us anything, it’s that things can change on a dime. It’s a roller coaster and all we can do is hang on tight.
