The research and online user demographics tool are the result of data gathered by the Civic Health and Institutions Project (CHIP50).
Social media is widely viewed as dynamic, innovative and driven by the ethos to “move fast and break things.”
But new research from Northeastern University shows that the social media landscape has been relatively stable for the last four years, with one main exception — an exception that is about to be banned in the United States.
“For all the thinking about technological dynamism and so on, there’s been little change to the relative market shares of the platforms for the last four years, except mainly TikTok,” says David Lazer, Northeastern University distinguished professor of political science and computer science. “Now it sort of does feel like the one platform that is really challenging the big incumbents is being shut down.”
The research, as well as an interactive graphic allowing one to analyze the user demographics of different social media and instant messaging platforms, is the latest result of data gathered by the Civic Health and Institutions Project (CHIP50).
This 50-state survey effort that polls Americans on opinions and behaviors has been asking large samples of Americans about their social media use — including both which apps they use and how frequently they use them — since late 2020.
The latest report answering these questions comes at a critical time.
Citing national security concerns, Congress passed a law requiring that TikTok — owned by parent company ByteDance — be divested from Chinese ownership by Jan. 19 or it will be banned in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court and the incoming presidential administration of Donald J. Trump could change this, however.
TikTok users in the United States — especially those in the “influencer economy” — are nevertheless nervous.
So who are these users and how prevalent are they?
The researchers found that TikTok users skew far younger than for most other social media. Compared with its peers, TikTok is used more by non-white respondents; people with a high-school or less education; and “moderately, if consistently,” by more women than men and by more Democrats than Republicans.
Researchers also looked at how dominant different social media platforms were in terms of commanding users’ attention.
Researchers found that Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp — is the dominant social media/instant messaging company, controlling 48% of social media users’ attention on a weekly basis.
Alphabet (YouTube) has the second-largest share, capturing 19% of users’ attention each week.
TikTok is third — with 10% of users’ attention.
And looking at overall usage, researchers found the number of users for most social media platforms have not significantly changed since December 2020.
There are exceptions, of course — Threads did not exist four years ago, but is now used by 8% of the public, according to the research. Reddit increased from being used by about 16% of the public in late 2020 to almost 24% of the public today. X decreased from usage by about 35% of the public to 29% over the four years, according to the research.
But the biggest exception is TikTok.
Twenty-two percent of the public reported using the app in 2020; 41% use it now, according to the research. Moreover, while Instagram has significantly more users than TikTok, the total time spent on both platforms is roughly the same, indicating that TikTok is more “sticky” and brings users back more regularly.
Now TikTok is possibly going to be banned.
“You’re killing a medium that almost half the population uses and that two-thirds of the young people use, and we’re turning it off,” Lazer says.
There are some caveats — TikTok usage remains smaller than that of Instagram (50% of the public) and much smaller than Facebook (80% of the public). And TikTok’s U.S. growth appears to have plateaued over the last year or so, researchers note. (The legislation banning TikTok was signed into law in April.)
But this data tells us something about the social media landscape.
“It tells us that TikTok is hugely used — and used a comparable amount by young people as other giant platforms — and it’s the one major place of dynamism and change in the social media landscape over the last four or five years,” Lazer says. “I think what’s happening with TikTok may be a reflection of that larger dynamic of loss of innovation and a system that is really preserving the incumbents rather than facilitating new challengers.”