About two billion people around the world use TikTok, making it the fifth-largest social media platform in the world. Those numbers only begin to tell the story, though.
TikTok’s Impressive Growth
The four social apps with larger user bases than TikTok are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Some industry observers discount WhatsApp’s ranking in the top five, though, because it’s designed primarily for direct messaging rather than public sharing. Others discount YouTube because its primary focus is on long-form rather than short-form content.
Whichever platform you’re looking at, though, TikTok has experienced unprecedented growth, since TikTok’s competitors built their user numbers over a much longer period. Facebook (3 billion users) debuted in 2004, YouTube (2.5 billion) launched in 2005, and WhatsApp and Instagram (more than two billion each) arrived in 2009 and 2010, respectively.
By contrast, TikTok is a newbie. The platform, a combination of the Musica.ly app (200 million users) with the technology of the Chinese platform Douyin, was only introduced globally in 2018. It grew to a user base of 653 million users by the end of 2019, topped one million in 2020, reached 1.5 billion in 2022, and passed two billion users in 2024.
That’s a record of extraordinary growth; it took Instagram 12 years, Facebook 13 years, and YouTube 14 years to reach the two billion user mark.
Other Important TikTok Numbers
The number of total users on an app isn’t the only statistic that matters.
Social media advertisers and marketers are usually more concerned with so-called “active users,” generally measured by a metric called monthly active users (MAU). Anyone who uses a platform during the 30 days is counted in that month’s MAU. TikTok ranks fifth there as well, with more than 1.1 billion active users.
Another number that’s almost as important is the amount of time the average user spends using an app each month, and TikTok leads the pack with its users spending an average of 31 hours and 47 minutes on the platform monthly. That’s ahead of YouTube (about 27 hours), Facebook (19 hours), WhatsApp (17 hours), and Instagram (16 hours).
TikTok’s enormous user base and the amount of time users spend on the app baffle many users who find it virtually impossible to grow their fan bases. They understandably think it should be easy to pick up new fans from that huge audience. In reality, though, not all users receive equal exposure for their videos — meaning it’s hard to have content seen by potential followers.
The fastest and easiest way to grow a TikTok fan base is by buying follower packages from trustworthy services like iDigic, which trigger new visibility and powerful organic growth at very reasonable prices. You can learn more about iDigic’s follower services elsewhere on our site.
About the Author
Peter Hasselworth is a contributor at iDigic, sharing valuable insights about Instagram growth and social media marketing strategies.