Pew Research has a new dataset about TikTok usage in the U.S. and how Americans engage with the Chinese-owned platform.

There are some limitations to consider looking through this dataset, though: The findings rely on self-reported data from 2,745 U.S. adult TikTok users, along with some usage data from 869 people who "volunteered to share their account handle for research purposes".

Given that there are over 150 million U.S. TikTok users total, this is a minuscule fraction of the audience for the platform (0.0018%), whereas Pew's sampling methodology is trying to represent an expanded breadth of users from different ages and backgrounds. And given how popular TikTok is with younger users, that means that this data may not accurately reflect the behaviors among its most active cohort.

But as a general sample, this does provide some insight into some of the key trends. It's just that it may not be quite as representative for TikTok's particular user segments and audiences as it appears.

Pew's statistics first report that the top 25% of U.S. adults on TikTok create some 98% of all publicly available videos from this group.
That's not particularly surprising. Those high-end 20% users also produce 100 percent of X's content-and that trend has actually intensified over time, as more people have deserted public posting in favor of sharing-in more private communities, to wit, message groups). Therefore, a portion of the users of each site generate the vast majority of content, though perhaps the participative nature of TikTok regarding its trends makes it far more engaging in this context.

Perhaps, on the whole, 25% is actually higher than normal in the contemporary social media landscape.

Pew's data also shows that around 52% of U.S. adults on TikTok have ever posted a video on the platform, and most users get more value out of their "For You" feed, as opposed to their own following list.

"The median U.S. adult user follows 154 other accounts but has just 36 accounts who follow them – and has received no likes from other users."

That speaks to the larger shift that TikTok has been leading within social media more broadly, away from a more contained, curated following way of engaging and toward a wider, algorithm-defined experience.

"Some 85% of TikTok users say the content on their "For You" page is at least somewhat interesting, including 40% who call it either extremely or very interesting. Only 14% say it is not too or not at all interesting."
I don't know, these are some interesting insights, I guess, but the sampling in TikTok's case given the vastly different ways in which different groups use the app appears to make this less useful as an indicator of major usage behaviors.

As mentioned above, TikTok has over 150 million U.S. users and has become an extremely important and influential platform among younger cohorts in particular. In that regard, it might be more interesting to see a wider-ranging analysis of how youngsters are using the app as opposed to a more generalized view, which I'm not sure is reflective of its importance.

This does provide a general overview, which is useful, but I am not sure that doing this for all Americans would be nearly as useful here as a more specific, targeted report on young people.