The New Adult on the Block: Daily Active Users of TikTok Compared to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram During the COVID-19 Crisis in Belgium

It is believed that due to quarantine regulations during the covid-19 crisis, more people are attracted to social media. Especially TikTok seems to be linked to this crisis, given its rise to fame during the same period. However, to date, very little is known about TikTok regarding the number of users or usage characteristics. While considered a Social Network Site (SNS) oriented toward a younger audience of kids and teens, we hypothesized that TikTok would find its way to mainstream adult audiences, given the increasing attention devoted to this particular SNS in popular media. Cross-sectional data from 2500 Belgians (age between 18–64 years old) during the covid-19 crisis in 2020 show an expanding adoption of TikTok in daily active users (DAU). Further logistic regression analyses on the number of DAU show individual differences in sociodemographic background comparing SNS Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. The adult’s resulting profile on TikTok is younger, less graduated, with a lower income, living in urban areas, and having kids. Contrary to expectations, we did not find a gender effect nor a student effect. While not yet at the level of Facebook and Instagram, TikTok succeeded to quickly gain momentum in the adult space, to a level that is reaching that of a longer-standing platform like Twitter.