Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
If short-form video is the future of social media, TikTok is months, if not years, ahead of the competition.
Last year, US TikTok users spent the majority of their time on the app (55%) watching content in a fast-paced, attention-grabbing format, according to the annual report of market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Mobile Status report for 2025. The rest of the time was divided between the feed of the TikTok profile, the chat function, the live function, the search results and other areas of the app.
Instagram came in a distant second place, with users dedicating 37% of their time on the platform to its Reels feature. YouTube Shorts, meanwhile, took up 26% of people’s time.
“TikTok is the clear leader among short-form video apps, and its success has prompted other social leaders to add their own short-form video features,” reads a line from Sensor Tower’s report.
TikTok’s dominance in the space undoubtedly helped it top Sensor Tower’s list of the most downloaded social apps in the US last year.
As the future of TikTok remains uncertain after President Donald Trump attempt to delay the ban of the app in the United Statesrival platforms have been busy trying to attract TikTok’s 170 million users with bumps in advertising spending and new features.
Last week, for example, Snapchat debuted an advertising campaign with messaging encouraging viewers to “find their favorites on Snapchat.”
During the second half of 2024, Snapchat invested nearly $630,000 in advertising on national linear TV, according to figures from iSpot.tv, a television advertising measurement and analysis company. During the second half of 2023, by contrast, Snapchat spent nothing on the medium.
In the last few days, both X and Bluesky introduced dedicated feeds for vertical video. Substack featured a live video option for publishers.
Meta also tried to strengthen its presence in the short-form video market. Additional figures from Sensor Tower show that US Facebook users increased their share of time spent on Facebook Reels by 17 percentage points when comparing December 2024 with January 2024.
In the week before the initial ban on TikTok on January 19, Meta increased its digital advertising spending in the United States by 30% compared to the week before, according to Sensor Tower.
