Two-thirds of American teens use the app, and 1 in 6 say they watch it “almost constantly,” a Pew Research Center survey in August found usage of Facebook among the same group has been cut in half since 2015. The average American viewer watches TikTok for 80 minutes a day - more than the time spent on Facebook and Instagram, combined. No app has grown faster past a billion users, and more than 100 million of them are in the United States, roughly a third of the country. TikTok’s website was visited last year more often than Google. Its dominance, as estimated by the internet firms Cloudflare, Data.ai and Sensor Tower, is hard to overstate. Part 3: As Washington wavers, Beijing exerts control. The web’s most popular app has reshaped American culture, hypnotized the world and sparked a battle between two global superpowers. In five years, the app, once written off as a silly dance-video fad, has become one of the most prominent, discussed, distrusted, technically sophisticated and geopolitically complicated juggernauts on the internet - a phenomenon that has secured an unrivaled grasp on culture and everyday life and intensified the conflict between the world’s biggest superpowers. If you have not used TikTok, you are rapidly becoming the global exception. “It will suck you in for hours,” she said. Yet still, in her off hours, she does what all her friends do: watches TikTok.

Many days, she feels drained - by the endless scramble for new content by the weird mysteries of TikTok’s algorithm by the stalkers, harassers and trolls. Now 25, she spends her days making TikTok videos from her apartment in Los Angeles, negotiating advertising deals and always chasing the next big hit. Shelby Renae, a former pizza-shop worker, posts TikTok videos of herself playing the video game “Fortnite.” She has 1.3 million followers and her videos have been liked 37 million times.

Tiktok app