TikTok User Age, Gender, & Demographics (2026)

Since launching in 2016, TikTok has rapidly grown in popularity, reaching 2.21 billion adult users as of the latest 2026 report. 

TikTok is generally considered to be the social home of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. But is the app geared solely toward a young audience? How can you appeal to this huge market? And what's changing as a result of the Oracle-led handover of TikTok's US operations?

We’ll explore these questions and more below.

TikTok Demographic Data (Key Statistics)

• TikTok ads reach 2.21 billion adults worldwide (not counting India).
• Indonesia is TikTok’s largest market with 222.6 million adult users, ahead of the US at 162.5 million.
• 88.7% of internet users in Nigeria use TikTok, against a worldwide average of 36%.
• TikTok users spend 1 hour 34 minutes a day on the app on average; users in Peru spend 2 hours 22 minutes.
• 68% of US teens aged 13-17 use TikTok.
• 24.5% of TikTok’s adult audience is in South-East Asia.
• Women use TikTok more than men at every age, with the biggest gap at 16-24 (47.7% vs 41.4%).

TikTok Traffic Stats

TikTok has 2.21 billion users globally (excluding India since TikTok’s analytics tools don’t report reach data for India).

(Note: This figure is based on ad reach of 18+ users. It doesn’t necessarily represent a unique individual user count).

The TikTok website gets 2.7 billion visits per month. Despite being an app-first platform, TikTok remains one of the world’s top websites in terms of traffic.

TikTok also has an almost equal device split for web traffic: 47.7% desktop vs 52.3% mobile.

The average visitor spends about 13 minutes on TikTok web per visit.

Source: Semrush (get a 14-day free trial)

TikTok Users by Age

Roughly 44.5% of total Internet users aged 16-24 are on TikTok. 

While TikTok is more popular among the young, older users are not far behind. 

Here’s a breakdown of global TikTok users by age:

*Calculated using averages of DataReportal’s female and male figures 

TikTok is also quite popular among young US teens. 

68% of teens aged 13-17 use TikTok, making it the second-most popular social app in the US among this age group after YouTube.

Older teens aged 15-17 are the most popular age group on TikTok at 74%, while about 58% aged 13-14 years use TikTok.

The data shows that TikTok use isn’t as universal among young populations as often imagined. Fewer than half the internet users aged 16-24 worldwide are actively using TikTok.

Usage patterns by age also reveal a plateau that occurs in the middle age. People in the 45-54 years old category use TikTok almost as much as those aged 35-44 (33.4% vs 34.6%).

Sources: DataReportal, Pew Research

TikTok Users by Gender

Based on ad reach data for the 18+ TikTok audience, there are slightly more males (52.8%) on TikTok than females (47.2%).

However, women in every age group use TikTok at a higher rate than men in the same groups in terms of the total proportion of internet users. 

Split by age, the single largest group of TikTok users is male 25-34-year-olds (23.6%).

On the other end of the spectrum, male and female users aged 55+ are the smallest groups (4.2% male, 4.3% female).

The widest gender gap in TikTok usage occurs in people aged 16-24, where women use TikTok 6.3 percentage points more than men. 

The gap narrows with age, shrinking to only 1.7 percentage points at 65+.

Teenage popularity of TikTok in the US also reveals a slight gender gap, with 70% of teen girls using the app as opposed to 65% of teen boys.

Source: DataReportal, Pew Research

TikTok and Social Commerce

TikTok is among the leading platforms for product discovery. Followed by Instagram, and YouTube, TikTok is one of the favorite platforms for Gen Z, with 55% of them preferring TikTok for learning about new products.

TikTok Shop is one of the fastest growing social commerce platforms, recording 103% year-over-year growth in the first half of 2026 in the US alone.  

How to Track Popular TikTok Content

With a fairly even gender split and a 2-billion strong user base that spans Gen Alpha, Gen Z and Millennials, TikTok has now become an essential marketing channel.

Where TikTok once might have been perceived as only for "young" brands, ignoring the platform now is leaving almost a third of the online population on the table.

Obviously, there's lots of platform overlap. But TikTok says that 1 in 4 of its users cannot be found on other platforms.

And in any case, TikTok is home to highly engaged users. So you need to be able to use it effectively.

Tools like TikTok Insights can show you exactly what's trending upward on TikTok, allowing you to jump on audience trends before they peak.

 

The tool from Exploding Topics shows you the top TikTok topics by growth in views over the last 30 days. You can also view the last 7 days for hyper-fresh trends, and you can change the filter to look at total views, total posts, or growth in posts.

That gives you a great general view of what audiences are interacting with on TikTok. But if you're in a specific niche, you can really hone in on what's resonating with your target market.

You can view trending TikTok topics within 18 curated categories (education, fitness, health etc). And you can go hyper-specialized by searching for hashtags, e.g. "#KBeauty". 

You can then click into any topic of interest to see total posts, total views, total likes, and a selection of top-performing TikToks. You'll even get a useful visualization of related hashtags.

Sign up to Exploding Topics now to start reaching your audience on TikTok. 

TikTok Users by Region

TikTok’s geographical distribution has a significant spread across regions.

Almost one-quarter of the adult TikTok user base is concentrated in South-East Asia. It leads all other regions by a wide margin. 

South America is the second-largest region by TikTok user base at 14.4%.

North America makes up only 8.1% of the total TikTok audience, while Western Europe only accounts for just under 3%.

Rank	Region	% of Total TikTok Audience
1	South-East Asia	24.5%
2	South America	14.4%
3	Western Asia	8.5%
4	North America	8.1%
5	Southern Asia	7.2%
6	Central America	6.5%
7	Eastern Europe	5.9%
8	Northern Africa	5.3%
9	Eastern Asia	3.2%
10	Western Europe	2.9%
11	Southern Europe	2.8%
12	Western Africa	2.8%
13	Northern Europe	1.9%
14	Eastern Africa	1.4%
15	Southern Africa	1.4%
16	Central Asia	1%
17	Middle Africa	0.9%
18	Caribbean	0.8%
19	Oceania	0.6%

TikTok User Base By Country

Despite North American users representing just 8.1% of the total TikTok user base, the US is the second-largest individual market at a country level with 162 million adult users. 

Indonesia tops as the country with the highest number of individual TikTok users aged 18+ at 222.5 million.

Rank	Country	Total ad reach (millions)
1	Indonesia	222.6
2	United States	162.5
3	Brazil	143.8
4	Mexico	107.0
5	Vietnam	91.1
6	Pakistan	88.4
7	Philippines	78.1
8	Russian Federation	67.0
9	Thailand	66.4
10	Bangladesh	62.4

Curiously, some regions have TikTok reach overshooting adult population estimates. 

For instance, Saudi Arabia’s ad reach among TikTok users aged 18+ is 164%.

A few reasons include falsely stated user ages, a large expat population, and duplicate or fake accounts.

TikTok Saturation by Region

While Africa generally ranks much lower than other regions in terms of total TikTok users, some African countries have a remarkably high TikTok saturation as a ratio of total internet users aged 16+ by country.  

88.7% of internet users in Nigeria are actively using TikTok, compared to a worldwide average of 36%. 

Kenya is another African country with a very high proportion of Internet users using TikTok at 78.6%.

In contrast, the US has 47.4% of internet users using TikTok.

Rank	Country	Percentage of internet users aged 16+ who use TikTok
1	Nigeria	88.7%
2	Thailand	84.5%
3	Philippines	82.0%
4	Indonesia	81.6%
5	South Africa	80.1%
6	Saudi Arabia	80.0%
7	Mexico	79.9%
8	Kenya	78.6%
9	Vietnam	78.6%
10	Malaysia	77%

TikTok Use By Time Spent

The average daily time spent by users on the TikTok mobile app worldwide is 1 hour and 34 minutes.

Peru leads all other countries with an average time of 2 hours and 22 minutes daily.

Following Peru closely is Russia at 2 hours and 6 minutes.

These are the only two countries exceeding the 2-hour mark of daily TikTok usage.

Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 countries by average time spent on TikTok’s Android app:

The TikTok Sale: Oracle Takes on US Operations

With the US such a major international market, it's little wonder that the threat of a TikTok ban was such a big deal. But in 2026, an agreement has been reached to preserve the app's presence in the country.

A new venture has been created for the sole purpose of running TikTok in the US. Oracle has come on board, both as a major investor and as an assurer of security protocols.

Interestingly, ByteDance will retain a 19.9% stake. But the involvement of Oracle has satisfied the US government that TikTok can run without posing a threat to national security.

There are outstanding questions about what this TikTok sale will mean for the future of the app. It's expected that the new Oracle-backed company will be able to license the all-important algorithm from ByteDance, but will need to retrain it on US data.

However, at least in the short term, TikTok is likely to continue dominating in the US as the country remains the second largest in terms of total adult user base.

Sources: DataReportal, Axios

Most Popular TikTok Creators

As of the latest data, Khabane Lame is the most-followed individual on TikTok with 163+ million followers and a total like count of over 2.7 billion.

There are only two other TikTok creators having over 100 million followers: Charli D’Amelio and Mr Beast.

The majority of the top-followed TikTok creators are under 30 years of age. In the top 10, only two influencers are over 30 years of age (Dwayne Johnson and Zach King).

See the most followed accounts on social media to see how these figures compare to other platforms. And if you're looking for a TikTok user search tool, Semrush Social is a powerful monitoring kit that lets you track the most successful social accounts in your space

Here’s a list of the top 15 TikTok influencers ranked by follower count:

Outside of individual creators, there are many brand creators with millions of followers, such as TikTok which has over 96.1 million followers.

Football-related accounts are so massively popular. 

The FIFA World Cup account has 81.5 million followers, while the football club Real Madrid has 77.2 million followers.

Sources: Epidemic Sound, Dexerto, Famoid, Wikipedia

Key Takeaways

It’s fair to say that TikTok’s global appeal has permeated several age groups and regions.

Creators and users still skew young, although the average user is getting steadily older. 

And despite political tensions in the US calling for TikTok bans and the subsequent Oracle deal, TikTok remains wildly popular in the US, among young teens and adults alike. For more TikTok-related data, take a look at these posts:

• How Much Do TikTok Influencers Make
• Top TikTok Trends

 We've also examined the wider demographic transition in the US and worldwide.