Amid the advancement of the bill that could ban TikTok in the United States, Meta's Instagram has become the most downloaded app in the world. According to market analysis company Sensor Tower, the total number of Instagram downloads in 2023 was 768 million, a growth of 20%. TikTok, from Chinese company ByteDance, was downloaded 733 million times in the same period – an increase of 4%.
Instagram's rise in popularity has been attributed to Reels. The TikTok cloned feature was added in 2020 in response to the rapid rise of the Chinese social network and its viral videos, especially among Gen Z users.
Instagram's total number of monthly active users grew by 13 million in the last quarter of 2023 alone, totaling 1.47 billion. The number of active TikTok users fell by 12 million in the same period, reaching 1.12 billion in total.
Despite the blow, TikTok continues to show greater engagement. According to Sensor Tower, users spent an average of 95 minutes on TikTok in the fourth quarter of 2023, 62 minutes on Instagram, 30 minutes on X (formerly Twitter) and 19 minutes on Snapchat.
Political context
In 2022, Meta, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, was accused of hiring a company to defame TikTok and promote the Chinese platform as dangerous for children and American society.
The conflict, however, has been going on since at least 2020, when former President Donald Trump's government began a war against TikTok, which considered the application a national threat, saying that the company could give away the data of millions of users. -Americans to the Chinese government.
Recently, Trump, now a Republican pre-candidate in the US elections, said he was against the ban on TikTok that he himself introduced, claiming that the measure would give an even greater concentration of power to Facebook, which he considers “the enemy of the people”.
The US House is expected to vote on banning TikTok in the country this week, requiring ByteDance to sell the app within 6 months.
Source: CNN Brasil
Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.
