TikTok's growth strong despite Western bans: Asia-Pacific sees nearly 60% of world's social network users

The trend: As TikTok faces bans in Western areas like Europe, Canada, and the United States, its growth prospects continue to look strong in its home region, where nearly 60% of the world’s social network users are based.

In Asia-Pacific, TikTok will be the fastest-growing social platform this year. Its user increase in 2023 will be nearly double that of its much bigger US rival Instagram (13.6% versus 7.3%), per our report.

Fuel from Southeast Asia: Though it’s banned in India, TikTok will have much of its growth in Asia-Pacific driven by Southeast Asia. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam together will account for about half of TikTok users in Asia-Pacific, excluding China. And all of those countries except Singapore will see their TikTok user base rise more than 10% this year.

TikTok’s Asia-Pacific growth will be watched by marketers because that region will account for 67% of the increase in social users globally this year.

Declines at rivals: Facebook has a larger user following in Asia-Pacific relative to other social networks, but it will face user declines in several countries as the region’s new social media participants are joining Instagram and Snapchat. Twitter will see declines in user growth in all countries in Asia-Pacific except Japan as new users steer clear of the platform following its purchase by Elon Musk.

Go further: Read our Asia Pacific Social Media Outlook 2023 to learn more about changing usage patterns in the region.