TikTok is well on its way to world domination. As of this year, TikTok enjoys around 800 million users worldwide. That means that over 10% of the world’s population as it stands at time of writing is using TikTok. It stands to reason that creating a TikTok profile is pretty much essential if you want to have any kind of social media presence, and TikTok’s domination of the social media space is only likely to increase as time goes on. So what kind of people are using TikTok? What’s the audience breakdown of this phenomenally popular app? Join us as we take a look at the demographic breakdown of TikTok in 2020.
TikTok has…a lot of users
We can’t impress upon you enough just how many users TikTok has and how impressive its market share truly is. While it can’t quite lay claim to the distribution of an app like Facebook, which has 2.3 billion active users per month, there is a ridiculous number of people using TikTok at any given time. This is significant given that TikTok is the first Chinese social media app with true cross-cultural potential; many other Chinese social media apps haven’t managed to break through to other markets, but TikTok has succeeded where they failed. There are a number of reasons for this, but suffice it to say that TikTok has a huge demographic.
TikTok skews heavily young
The vast majority of users on TikTok are young people. Estimates suggest that around 50% of TikTok’s audience is below the age of 34. A whopping 41% of TikTok’s entire demographic reach is those aged between 18 and 24, so it’s fair to say that TikTok has entirely cornered the market on younger folks. Again, it’s hard to pin this down to any one factor; TikTok’s content appeals to younger people in a way that it simply doesn’t to older demographics, but it’s also because young people are turning away from traditional social networks in droves. Given TikTok’s emphasis on transitory content and memes, its appeal to younger people may not be surprising.
Most TikTok users are male
A user’s gender should, of course, have absolutely no bearing on their browsing habits, but it’s still an interesting bit of information that 56% of TikTok users are male. With that in mind, you might expect to see content that’s geared towards men becoming more prevalent on the platform. It’s especially interesting given that the majority of Facebook users are women, as are the majority of Instagram users, but the majority of Twitter users are male. There could be a similarity here between the immediacy and ephemeral nature of TikTok content when compared to Twitter; it’s all about brevity, so that might be something that attracts men more than women.
Most TikTok users are Chinese
In 2019 alone, Chinese users made up 80% of the total time the world spent on TikTok. That indicates the app, which is owned by Chinese startup ByteDance, hasn’t quite reached the mass global penetration it would like to. That’s just a matter of time, though; 2020 (and, looking into the future, 2021) will be an amazing year for TikTok, and we fully expect the app to skyrocket into the big leagues, taking much more of a global share than its Chinese audience would suggest. We’re not surprised the vast majority of TikTok users are still Chinese; after all, that’s the app’s homeland. Still, this is the first Chinese social media app with the potential to really cross over into the global mainstream.
India is an emergent market for TikTok
Without wishing to delve into the minutiae of Indian economics, it’s worth bearing in mind that a huge number of new TikTok users – roughly 43% of them – are from India. That’s probably because India has an emergent market for smartphones and a lot of users are discovering the app’s potential. It’s also because TikTok has taken hold in rural Indian communities that aren’t quite as central as big cities. A huge number of Indian TikTok users earn less than 25,000 rupees per month, which equates to around $350. The success of TikTok in this particular market is something for market analysts to puzzle out, but we’re betting it’s the homegrown nature of the app that works in its favour.
So, there you have it. This is the current demographic breakdown of TikTok in a nutshell. It’s taking off around the world and establishing a presence for itself alongside other social media giants, so it’s only a matter of time before we see TikTok’s market share increase even further and faster than it already has. What kind of users will predominantly use TikTok in the future? Only time will tell.
