TikTok usage continues to climb among US adults: report

US adults are all over the place in terms of social media usage, fragmented based on age, gender, race, and class across platforms, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center. But there’s one thing everyone seems to agree on: TikTok.

One-third of respondents to the survey, which was conducted among 5,733 adults between May and September last year, reported having used TikTok, up from 21% in 2021.

Other platforms have much higher usage overall. More than eight in 10 US adults surveyed said they’ve used YouTube, followed closely by Facebook, which 68% of US adults said they’d used. In third place was Instagram, with about half of those surveyed saying they’d used the platform.

Child’s play: There were significant differences in social media usage by age, the report said. When it came to Instagram, 78% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they use the platform, compared to 15% of those 65 and older. The only platforms that the lion’s share of all surveyed age groups used were YouTube and Facebook.

Coexist: Platform usage also varied across race and gender. While 49% of Hispanic adults surveyed said they used TikTok, only 28% of white respondents said the same. Women were also more likely to use TikTok than men, at 40% and 25%, respectively.

Make it rain: Social media usage also diverged along class lines, the report found. Nearly one in three adults who had at least a $100,000 annual household income reported using X, compared to about one in five for those with lower annual household incomes.

Chronically online: In a separate study on mobile and broadband use, Pew also found that 62% of 18- to 29-year-olds are “constantly online,” compared to 15% of respondents aged 65 and older. While smartphones were widely owned by all income groups surveyed, 15% of adults were “smartphone dependent” and had no high-speed broadband service at home. Those in lower-income homes were more likely to use their smartphone to access the Internet.

Despite all the demographic variances, one thing is true across the board: Today’s levels of connectedness are “a far cry” from those in the early 2000s, the mobile and broadband report said.