TikTok, which has already surpassed YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in terms of watch time by American adults, is now going after Netflix, says a study at a time when authorities are considering a complete ban on the Chinese social network .
The platform, which belongs to the Chinese group ByteDance, first won over young people, but adults are also widely adopting it, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, underlines an Insider Intelligence report published this Thursday.
This year, “TikTok users ages 25 to 54 – ‘millennials’ and ‘gen X’ – will spend more than 45 minutes a day on the app, much more than the time spent by users of the same age on other networks. social.”, indicates the market research company.
TikTok surpassed industry giant YouTube (Google) in 2021 in time spent by adults on each platform.
By 2024, Insider Intelligence predicts that TikTok users aged 18 and over will spend more than 58 minutes a day on average on the social network, trailing only Netflix (62 minutes) and well ahead of YouTube (48.7 minutes). .
By contrast, California social media efforts to mimic short-form viral videos had mixed effects, the analysis found.
On YouTube, the ‘shorts’ “didn’t rock the waters”, while the ‘reels’ from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, are having some success, but the time users spend watching them cannibalizes the time they spend watching. other. formats, the main ‘feed’ and ‘stories’, which show more ads and consequently bring more money to the group.
The report also mentions the ‘second screen’ phenomenon, in which users are often on TikTok while Netflix is playing in the background.
“Advertisers planning to purchase advertising on Netflix should be aware that some viewers may become distracted to the point of abandoning their streaming platform,” Insider Intelligence noted in the report.
These statistics show the importance of TikTok in the United States, where it has more than one hundred million users in this country.
But its connection to ByteDance worries US authorities, who fear that Beijing will use the social network to access sensitive data or manipulate public opinion.
TikTok has denied these intentions for years, but tensions between the two countries and, recently, the passage of an alleged Chinese “spy balloon” over the US, have returned calls for the US to stand firm against China.
On Wednesday, a bill that could lead to an outright ban on the platform in the United States passed as a major milestone in the US Congress.
Already on Monday, the White House ruled that federal agencies must ensure that TikTok is off the official mobile devices of their employees within 30 days, after its ban was signed into law in late December.
Several US states and academic institutions have taken similar steps.
In Europe, the European Commission (EC), the Council of the European Union (EU), the European Parliament (EP), the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the Economic and Social Council (ESC) have already announced that they will ban TikTok of their official mobile devices, at a time when they seek to better protect themselves against the increase in cyberattacks.
Source: TSF