Statistics
UK TikTok Statistics (2026): Users, Time Spent, Demographics & News
Search for UK TikTok statistics and you’ll find five different answers to the first question anyone asks: 23 million users, 24 million, 25 million, 27 million, 30 million. Most stats pages copy one of those from another stats page, and none of them says what’s actually being counted. This page goes back to the original sources (Ofcom, the UK government and TikTok’s own published figures), links every number, says what each one measures, and labels the year it describes.
Last updated 8 October 2026. We refresh this page annually as new editions of the reports land.
Key UK TikTok statistics
- 27.3 million UK adults use TikTok each month, 56% of adults online, up 14% in a year (Ofcom, 2025)
- 10.4 million use it every day, up 37% in a year (Ofcom, 2025)
- UK adult users spend an average of 28 minutes a day on TikTok; 18-to-34-year-olds spend 49 minutes (Ofcom, 2025)
- Counting teenagers, TikTok says more than 30 million people in the UK use it every month, its biggest audience in Europe (TikTok, 2025)
- 31% of 16-to-24-year-olds use TikTok for news, second only to the BBC (Ofcom, 2025)
- 15-to-17-year-olds spend 50 minutes a day on TikTok (Ofcom, 2025)
- 1.5 million+ UK businesses are on TikTok (TikTok, 2025)
- Under-16s are due to be banned from social media, TikTok included, from spring 2027 (UK government, 2026)
How many people use TikTok in the UK?
About 27 million UK adults use TikTok every month, and over 30 million people if you count teenagers. The reason every stats page gives a different number is that there are three main counts, and each measures something different:
| Source | What it counts | Date | Figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ofcom (Ipsos iris measurement) | UK adults 18+ who visited TikTok in the month, measured independently | May 2025 | 27.3m |
| TikTok advertising tools | Adults 18+ that advertisers can reach on TikTok | Oct 2025 | 26.8m |
| TikTok | Monthly active users of all ages (TikTok allows 13+), self-reported | Jan–Mar 2025 | 30m+ |
If you’re citing one figure, Ofcom’s is the independent measurement: according to its Online Nation 2025 report, 56% of UK adults online used TikTok in May 2025. The ad-reach figure, reported in DataReportal’s Digital 2026: The United Kingdom, is 48.4% of UK adults. TikTok’s own count was published in its June 2025 announcement and includes the 13-to-17s the other two leave out.
The growth is steady rather than explosive. Monthly adult users went from 21.2 million in 2023 to 24.0 million in 2024 to 27.3 million in 2025. Daily use is growing much faster: 10.4 million adults use TikTok every day, up 37% in a year and up from 6.7 million in 2023. Fewer new people are arriving, but the ones already there are using it more.
On phones, TikTok is the 10th most-used app in the UK, reaching 46% of adult smartphone users. Among 18-to-34s it’s 8th, reaching 65%.
How much time do Britons spend on TikTok?
UK adults who use TikTok spend an average of 28 minutes a day on it, creeping up from 26 minutes in 2023 and 27 in 2024 (Ofcom). Age makes the real difference: 18-to-34-year-olds spend 49 minutes a day. Women spend more time on it than men, 32 minutes a day, and account for 63% of all the time adults spend on the app.
Teenagers spend longer still. Ofcom puts 15-to-17-year-olds at 50 minutes a day on TikTok, well ahead of Instagram (36 minutes).
Who uses TikTok in the UK?
TikTok’s UK audience leans young and slightly female:
- 55% of adult users are women (Ofcom, 2025). TikTok’s own ad audience skews further, at 61.5% female (TikTok ad tools, October 2025), though that counts a different group.
- 39% of adult users are aged 18 to 34.
- Among children aged 8 to 14, TikTok is one of the ten most-used online services, averaging 15 minutes a day across the age group (Ofcom).
- Half (51%) of 8-to-14-year-olds who use TikTok used it late at night, between 11pm and 5am, at least once in a four-week period (Ofcom).
TikTok and news in the UK
TikTok has become a news source, particularly for younger people. Ofcom’s News consumption in the UK 2025 report found:
- 11% of UK adults use TikTok for news, up from 1% in 2020.
- Among 16-to-24-year-olds, 31% get news on TikTok, the most-used single source after the BBC (39%), and ahead of YouTube (30%) and Instagram (24%).
- 11% of 12-to-15-year-olds say TikTok is their most important source of news.
How does TikTok compare with YouTube in the UK?
YouTube is still far bigger, but TikTok is growing faster. These figures all come from the same Ofcom measurement in the same month, so the comparison is fair:
| Platform | Minutes a day per user | User growth in a year | UK adults reached monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube | 51 | +4% | 94% |
| Facebook / Messenger | 43 | +6% | 93% |
| 20 | +7% | 78% | |
| TikTok | 28 | +14% | 56% |
Source: Ofcom Online Nation 2025, May 2025, UK adults online (excludes viewing on TV sets).
For the full YouTube picture, including how YouTube took over the living-room TV, see our UK YouTube statistics.
The UK’s under-16 social media ban
On 15 June 2026 the government announced that social media platforms will be blocked from offering their services to under-16s, and named TikTok in the list alongside Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X (GOV.UK). The government says 9 in 10 parents supported a ban, and its consultation drew more than 116,000 responses.
According to the government’s July 2026 response, the restrictions are expected to come into force in spring 2027, with the regulations laid before Parliament by the end of 2026 and Ofcom enforcing them. 16- and 17-year-olds will keep access, but with autoplay and personalised feeds switched off by default, and social media restricted between midnight and 6am, settings they can change themselves.
For TikTok that matters more than for most platforms: 13-to-15-year-olds are inside TikTok’s own 30 million figure, so that headline number is likely to fall once the ban is in force.
What is TikTok worth to the UK economy?
TikTok says more than 1.5 million UK businesses are on the platform (June 2025). Research by Public First produced for TikTok, with additional analysis by EY, estimates that TikTok supported at least £10 billion of economic value (GVA) in the UK in 2025 and 153,000 jobs. The same study estimates TikTok helped small businesses generate £3.4 billion of additional output, and 84% of UK businesses using TikTok said it had helped their sales.
Treat those as the platform’s own case for itself: they’re modelled estimates in a study made for TikTok. An earlier TikTok-commissioned study by Oxford Economics put small businesses’ TikTok activity at £1.6 billion of UK GDP in 2022, a narrower measure that isn’t directly comparable.
What do the numbers mean for businesses?
Two things stand out to us, as people who make social video for businesses every month.
First, if your customers are under 35, this is where their attention is: 18-to-34-year-olds who use TikTok spend 49 minutes a day on it. Second, daily use is growing more than twice as fast as the number of users. TikTok is becoming a habit, and the feed rewards whoever turns up consistently, not whoever posted one brilliant video in March.
That’s also why, for most businesses, we’d put YouTube first. TikTok needs constant feeding: a video gets its moment in the feed and then it’s gone, so you’re always making the next one. A YouTube video keeps turning up in search and recommendations for years, so every one you make keeps working. TikTok earns its place alongside that, but it’s rarely the best place to start. If you want a channel that brings in customers, that’s what our YouTube marketing service is for.
And if your audience really does live on TikTok, the hard part is keeping it going once client work gets busy. It’s why our social media video production runs on a monthly rhythm, filmed in a batch and edited properly for each platform.
Sources & methodology
Every statistic on this page links to its original source, and each is labelled with the year it describes. We refresh this page annually as new report editions are published. Figures from TikTok itself, or from research made for TikTok, are labelled as such.
The graphics on this page are free to reuse in articles, presentations and reports. Please credit Steadyhand Productions with a link to this page.
- Ofcom, Online Nation 2025 (published 10 December 2025; Ipsos iris data, May 2025; children’s data from Ofcom’s Children’s Passive Online Measurement 2025)
- Ofcom, News consumption in the UK 2025 (published 21 July 2025)
- TikTok, TikTok expands investment and presence in the UK as number of regular users crosses 30 million (9 June 2025)
- DataReportal, Digital 2026: The United Kingdom (TikTok advertising data, October 2025)
- GOV.UK, Social media to be banned for under-16s (15 June 2026)
- GOV.UK, Growing up in the online world: government response (July 2026)
- Public First (with EY) for TikTok, TikTok’s Economic Impact in the UK (2026)
- Oxford Economics for TikTok, The TikTok Effect (July 2023)
