In case it hasn’t been blatantly obvious, TikTok is unanimously the choice-app for younger users. A new survey from Forrester that incorporates responses from around 4,600 teens within the US has found that TikTok managed a 13-point YoY rise in weekly usage, whereas Instagram has gone down by 4 in the same period. Things aren’t starting out too well for Facebook’s attempt to win back the youth.
According to Forrester’s ‘Consumer Technographics US Youth Survey’, 63% of teens in the US indicated that they use TikTok weekly, which was up from 50% last year. On the other hand, Instagram goes down to 57% from last year’s 61%. These numbers stand as testament to TikTok’s rapid growth and popularity among younger audiences, something that’s been shaking Facebook – now Meta – up since 2019 because of the threat TikTok now poses to its market dominance.
Meta usually addresses such challengers with an initial approach to try and buy them out, at least before they get too big and influential. This process was, in part, based on Facebook’s controversial Onavo VPN monitoring program which essentially allowed them to progressively track key app trends. The program was forced to shut down in January 2019 due to its intrusive and highly exploitative nature. Without their precious tracker, Meta was virtually handicapped against TikTok’s momentum gain, meaning that they were unable to suppress TikTok’s rising influence. TikTok saw major growth in 2019, garnering up to 44% of their all-time downloads; that’s nearly half of the Total TikTok downloads ever since the app came online.
With plan A down the drain, Meta effectively moved to plan B – cloning. That’s right, Meta seems to be a firm believer in the saying “If you can’t beat them, join them.” As TikTok was becoming a thing, Facebook decided to launch Instagram Reels in Brazil in late 2019. Reels then saw an expansion in select European markets, then India by July 2020, strategically just after TikTok got banned in the region due to geopolitical concerns.
Be that as it may, and as shown by this new Forrester study and various others, Reels wasn’t able to slow down TikTok’s expansion. Even as Facebook prodded US Government officials about potential security concerns with the Chinese-owned app and after launching its own version of Reels, it failed to fend off TikTok and the newcomer just kept on stealing its mojo. At this point, TikTok was basically back-handing Facebook while effectively pushing Instagram to the sidelines.
It’s also worth noting that YouTube, as per Forrester’s stats, remains as the most used app among US teens, with 72% of teens using it weekly. This makes both TikTok and YouTube trend leaders in relation to their respective usage paths. Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram seem to be sleeping further back as lack of personal innovation and the inability to catch on to trends continues to lessen their ‘coolness’ factor.
The Wrap
TikTok is definitely causing quite a problem for Meta, especially with its big Metaverse shift plans and all. If Meta continues to lose ground to its competitors, then the Metaverse only gets that much farther from actualization. It’ll spell trouble for Meta’s relevance in the long run; even if they have the technological superiority to come up with all new hardware and accessories, like their new AR glasses, while they are powerful, no one will bother getting them if they don’t appear ‘cool’.
Whether or not Meta can win back the younger audience is a topic for a separate piece, but what is certain is that TikTok is poised to keep the crown as the most popular platform among younger users, something that’ll greatly contribute to its longevity and future success.
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