Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images News
TikTok’s user growth in the United States has slowed to a crawl as more people quit the social video app, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. Competition from Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), whose Instagram Reels is gaining popularity, and a breakdown in licensing talks with Universal Music Group also are headaches.
The decline in users is especially evident among younger consumers who were among the first to embrace the app’s bottomless feed of user-generated videos. The average number of U.S. monthly users ages 18 to 24 fell by almost 9% from 2022 to 2023, data from mobile analytics company Data.ai show. Amid growth among older age cohorts, TikTok has an estimated 170 million users, up from 150 million last year.
TikTok, which is owned by Chinese technology company ByteDance, met its ad-sales targets for the second half of last year, but didn’t exceed them, the Journal reported, citing its sources. TikTok and ByteDance aren’t publicly traded, limiting the amount of financial information about their operations. TikTok isn’t profitable, the Journal reported.
ByteDance this month is facing renewed calls from U.S. lawmakers to ban TikTok because of national-security and data-privacy concerns. TikTok has said it hasn’t turned over data to the Chinese government and wouldn’t do so if asked.
The House on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve a bill to ban TikTok unless ByteDance sells the app’s U.S. operations to a company that isn’t subject to China’s laws on data sharing. The bill faces more debate in the Senate, and President Biden said he would sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.
