This was first published April 25, in our weekly newsletter Apptopia Insight. To receive insights like this weekly, sign up here.

  • YouTube and Instagram stand to gain the most time back from a TikTok ban – with YouTube gaining 25 (+45%) minutes and Instagram gaining 15 minutes (+48%) back from TikTok on average
  • TikTok is consolidating users – since 2023, the trend has been for TikTok users to use YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat less

Between the recent ‘Sale-or-ban’ bill passed by Congress and social media earnings reports, this week’s newsletter is dedicated to TikTok. Users spend 98 mins per day on TikTok on average in the U.S – a remarkable amount of time and more than any other social media app on average. 

Where do those minutes go in the event of a ban? Our analysis leverages mobile panel data to see real user behavior on TikTok and social media apps. We compare how TikTok users behave on competing social media apps with how an average user behaves on those competing social media apps to get a sense for the change in the event of a ban. 

The largest changes are with YouTube and Instagram. YouTube users that use TikTok spend 31% less time on YouTube than the average user, while Instagram users that use TikTok spend 32% less time on Instagram than the average user.

Another way to slice it is to look at the overlap of TikTok users on other apps – in 1Q24, 83% of TikTok users used YouTube, 64% used Instagram, and 57% used Snapchat. Across the other social media apps, the trend is for TikTok to consolidate users. Since 2023, the percentage of TikTok users on each of these other apps has fallen (for example, YouTube down from 90% in Feb 2023 to 83% in Feb 2024). 

One interesting callout here is SNAP – in 1Q24, 57% of TikTok users use Snapchat but 77% of Snapchat users use TikTok.

Want a different cut of this data? Curious to learn more?

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