US TikTok users will spend nearly an hour, 57 minutes, on the app per day in 2026, according to EMARKETER forecasts. Time spent on TikTok statistics also show children spending far longer on the app. Kids worldwide averaged 2.2 hours a day on TikTok, with the heaviest 2025 users in the US at 2.5 hours, per Qustodio.
A data donation study of 347 TikTok users found a median of 27 minutes a day, so method shapes the answer. The figures below keep forecasts, parental-control device logs and donated viewing histories apart, then cover the screen time limits now in place.
Key Takeaways
- EMARKETER forecasts that US TikTok users will spend 57 minutes a day on the app in 2026, behind YouTube at 61 minutes but far ahead of Instagram at 37 minutes.
- Kids’ time on TikTok grew 10%, or 12 whole minutes, globally in Qustodio’s 2025 annual data report.
- Donated viewing histories show a median of 89.9 videos and 27 minutes of TikTok a day.
- Daily TikTok use reaches 61% of US teens, and 21% say they are on it almost constantly, up from 16% in 2022.
- Alabama’s settlement requires a two-hour daily time limit and pauses for teen users after 15 minutes of continuous use.
- A fifth of US adults regularly get news on TikTok, up from 3% in 2020, per a Pew Research Center survey from August 2026.
- TikTok’s internal test found its time tool cut teen use from around 108.5 minutes a day to roughly 107 minutes, according to Kentucky’s complaint as reported by NPR.
Editor’s Choice
- US kids’ daily TikTok time in 2025: 152 minutes.
- British children using TikTok, daily time in 2025: 2 hours 23 minutes.
- Videos needed to form a habit, per TikTok’s own findings: 260.
- US adults who are daily TikTok users: 24%.
- Black US teens on TikTok almost constantly: 37%.
- TikTok’s announced default daily screen time limit for accounts under 18: 60 minutes.
Time Spent on TikTok Statistics: Average Minutes Per Day
- In the data donation study, the median participant spent 1,622 seconds a day on TikTok, or 27 minutes.
- Teens spent around 108.5 minutes a day on TikTok before its time tool, according to internal documents cited by Kentucky investigators.
- Across all iOS and Google Play apps, Sensor Tower estimates people spent roughly 3.6 hours per day per mobile user.
| Measure | Who it covers | Daily time on TikTok |
|---|---|---|
| EMARKETER forecast, 2026 | US TikTok users | 57 minutes |
| Qustodio device data, 2025 | Kids worldwide | 2.2 hours |
| Qustodio device data, 2025 | US kids | 2.5 hours |
| Qustodio UK data, 2025 | British children using TikTok | 2 hours 23 minutes |
| Data donation study | 347 TikTok users, median | 27 minutes |
| TikTok internal test | Teens, before the time tool | Around 108.5 minutes |
Source: EMARKETER 2026, Qustodio 2025, arXiv data donation study, NPR 2024
How long does the average user spend on TikTok a day?
US TikTok users will spend nearly an hour, 57 minutes, a day on the app in 2026, by EMARKETER’s forecast. Logged viewing data runs lower, with a median of 27 minutes a day across 347 donated histories. Children run far higher, at 2.2 hours a day worldwide.
About This Data
- Sources: 14, including 4 Pew Research Center reports and 3 Qustodio publications.
- Also cited: 2 TikTok newsroom posts, 1 peer-reviewed study, 1 state attorney general announcement, 1 EMARKETER forecast, 1 Sensor Tower report and 1 NPR report.
- Publication window: 2023 to October 2026.
- Only figures traceable to the publishing organization were kept, and figures are updated when sources publish new editions.
TikTok vs YouTube and Instagram Daily Minutes in the US
- US YouTube users will spend 61 minutes a day on the platform, ahead of TikTok, in EMARKETER’s 2026 forecast.
- TikTok’s forecast daily time is 20 minutes longer than Instagram’s.
- EMARKETER cites mounting competition, regulatory pressure and shifting user habits as threats to TikTok’s relevance with marketers.
View the data
A gap of a few minutes makes the YouTube vs TikTok race a contest of daily attention as much as of users.
Recent Developments
- October 19, 2026: Pew Research Center reported that a fifth of US adults regularly get news on TikTok, unchanged from 2025 but up from 3% in 2020.
- August 24 to 30, 2026: Pew’s survey of 5,166 US adults found 39% of those ages 18 to 29 regularly get news on TikTok.
- September 2026: Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced a settlement under which Alabama will receive a minimum of $100 million from TikTok, and up to $300 million if certain conditions are met.
- September 2026: Alabama’s settlement requires pauses that interrupt teen users after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 minutes and 90 minutes.
- September 2026: The same settlement restricts children’s access to TikTok from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.
- May 27, 2026: EMARKETER’s TikTok Marketing 2026 report forecast 57 minutes a day for US TikTok users, behind YouTube’s 61 minutes.
Kids’ Daily TikTok Time by Country
- The heaviest TikTok users among kids in 2025 were in the US, at 152 minutes a day in Qustodio’s data.
- Children in Australia increased their TikTok time by 76% since 2021, rising from 75 minutes to 132 minutes daily.
- Children in France raised their time on TikTok by 64% since 2021.
- Worldwide, kids’ time on TikTok grew by 10%, or 12 whole minutes, in Qustodio’s annual data.
- Qustodio describes kids turning from communication apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat toward feed-based platforms like TikTok and Instagram over 2025.
View the data
These figures come from homes running parental-control software, so they describe monitored children; the wider screen time by age data adds context.
US Kids’ TikTok Minutes by Year
- US kids’ daily TikTok time rose from 99 minutes in 2021 to 152 minutes in 2025, in Qustodio’s data.
- Children in the US extended their daily TikTok scroll by an average of 20 minutes extra per day across 2025.
- Daily TikTok minutes for US kids rose 53.5% between 2021 and 2025.
View the data
By the numbers: Qustodio’s data shows US kids spending 152 minutes a day on TikTok in 2025, up from 132 in 2024. TikTok announced a 60-minute default daily limit for every account belonging to a user below age 18. The monitored US child now spends more than twice that default on the app, which leaves parents to decide how tight the controls should be.
UK Children’s TikTok Time and Parent Risk Ratings
- British children using TikTok averaged 2 hours 23 minutes a day on the app in 2025.
- Across all children in the Qustodio study, UK social media time averaged 67 minutes a day in 2025, up from 58 minutes in 2024.
- Over three quarters of parents, 77%, classify content on TikTok as high risk.
- Half of parents, 50%, believe the same of Instagram content.
View the data
How Many TikTok Videos People Watch a Day
- Participants in the data donation study watched a median of 89.9 videos per day.
- A quarter of participants watched fewer than 40.7 videos a day, and the most active quarter watched 170.3 or more.
- The most active quarter spent 48 minutes or more a day on TikTok.
- Daily videos viewed and time spent rose over time, with a 2× increase after 80 days.
- Across all participants, 55% of recommended videos were not watched till the end.
- The authors compare this with YouTube, where people spend on average 19 minutes, citing earlier research.
| Measure | Bottom quarter | Median | Top quarter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Videos watched per day | Fewer than 40.7 | 89.9 | 170.3 or more |
| Minutes on TikTok per day | Less than 13.9 | 27 | 48 or more |
Source: arXiv 2301.04945, CHI 2024 data donation study
How many TikToks does a person watch a day?
Donated histories from 347 TikTok users show a median of 89.9 videos a day. Heavy users in the top quarter watched 170.3 or more videos a day. Short clips let that volume fit into well under an hour for most viewers, and research on the TikTok brain effect studies the same rapid-fire format.
Daily TikTok Use Among US Teens
- Daily TikTok use reaches 61% of US teens ages 13 to 17, per a Pew Research Center survey of 1,458 teens.
- Roughly three-quarters of teens use YouTube every day, making it the platform the most teens visit daily.
- Far fewer teens visit Facebook daily, at 20%.
- Teen daily use of these platforms remains relatively stable from past years, according to Pew.
View the data
Almost-Constant TikTok Use by Teen Group
- The share of US teens on TikTok almost constantly ticked up to 21%, from 16% in 2022.
- Across five platforms, 36% of teens use at least one of them almost constantly.
- Teen girls are on TikTok almost constantly at 24%, against 17% of teen boys.
- Black teens stand out, with 37% on TikTok almost constantly.
View the data
Key finding: Pew Research Center found 21% of US teens on TikTok almost constantly, up from 16% in 2022, while near-constant use of YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook has changed little since 2022. Among those five apps, TikTok is where the heaviest teen use is still climbing.
US Adult TikTok Use by Age
- About six-in-ten US adults under 30, 63%, say they use TikTok.
- Overall, 37% of US adults say they use TikTok, up from 21% in 2021.
- About a quarter of US adults, 24%, say they are daily users of TikTok.
- Roughly half of 18- to 29-year-olds go on TikTok at least once a day, compared with just 5% of adults ages 65 and older.
View the data
How many people use TikTok every day?
About a quarter of US adults, 24%, use TikTok daily, in a Pew survey of 5,123 adults conducted from Feb. 24 to March 2, 2025. Among US teens, 61% go on TikTok daily. Daily use skews young, and the wider TikTok usage figures track reach beyond the US.
TikTok as a News Habit by Age
- A fifth of US adults regularly get news on TikTok, a share unchanged from 2025.
- Among adults ages 18 to 29, 39% regularly get news there.
- The share is 25% for ages 30 to 49 and 4% for ages 65 and older.
- Pew surveyed 5,166 US adults from Aug. 24 to 30, 2026.
View the data
TikTok Screen Time Limits and Defaults
- TikTok announced that every account belonging to a user below age 18 would automatically be set to a 60-minute daily screen time limit.
- Alabama’s settlement adds pauses that interrupt teen users after 15 minutes of continuous use and again at 60 minutes and 90 minutes.
- Kids worldwide averaged 2.2 hours a day on TikTok in 2025, per Qustodio.
- TikTok says an earlier prompt encouraging teens to enable screen time management helped increase the use of its screen time tools by 234%.
- TikTok turned on a meditation feature by default for teens at 10pm to support them as they wind down at night.
- Alabama’s settlement sets a two-hour daily time limit, with parental controls that allow parents to further limit time on TikTok.
| Control | Setting | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok default daily limit | 60 minutes | Accounts under 18 |
| Extra time in the under-13 experience | 30 minutes with a parent passcode | Under 13 |
| Limit-setting prompt | After more than 100 minutes in a day | Teens who opt out of the default |
| Alabama settlement daily limit | Two hours | Children |
| Alabama productive pauses | After 15, 60 and 90 minutes | Teen users |
| Alabama nighttime access | Restricted from 12:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. | Children |
Source: TikTok Newsroom, Alabama Attorney General 2026
Why it matters: TikTok’s announced default caps accounts under 18 at 60 minutes a day, while Alabama’s settlement sets a two-hour daily limit with pauses at 15, 60 minutes and 90 minutes. Kids worldwide averaged 2.2 hours a day on TikTok, per Qustodio. Both limits sit below that average, so defaults only change behavior when they stay switched on.
What TikTok’s Internal Documents Show About Watch Time
- TikTok determined that 260 videos is the amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit, according to Kentucky investigators.
- Kentucky’s complaint says TikTok videos can be as short as 8 seconds and play in rapid-fire succession, automatically.
- TikTok’s internal test found its time tool accounted for about a 1.5-minute drop in teen use.
- The pre-tool teen average of around 108.5 minutes sat 48.5 minutes above the 60-minute default.
- TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek defended the company’s child safety record in a statement: “Unfortunately, this complaint cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.”
| Figure cited in the Kentucky complaint | Value |
|---|---|
| Videos to form a habit | 260 videos |
| Shortest TikTok video length | 8 seconds |
| Time to become likely addicted | Under 35 minutes |
| Teen daily use before the time tool | Around 108.5 minutes |
| Teen daily use with the time tool | Roughly 107 minutes |
Source: NPR 2024 reporting on the Kentucky Attorney General’s complaint
Those documents now sit at the center of the social media addiction debate that state lawsuits drive.
Conclusion
US TikTok users will spend 57 minutes a day on the app this year, by EMARKETER’s forecast. Kids worldwide average 2.2 hours a day on TikTok. The spread reflects method more than disagreement.
A 60-minute default and a two-hour settlement cap both sit below what heavy users already spend. The figures to watch next are whether those caps stay on and whether kids’ daily minutes keep rising.
