A minority of TikTok users are responsible for most of the platform’s content

Most of the content on TikTok comes from the same, small group of users.

The “most active” 25% of US adult users on TikTok are responsible for 98% of public content on the platform, the Pew Research Center found in a new report published on Thursday. Pew determined the threshold for “most active” as a user who’s posted at least seven public videos.

Pew previously found the same trend on X, where the most active 20% of users were responsible for 97% of all tweets in 2021.

“Notably, there are no significant differences in the share of users who have posted on the site based on gender, political affiliation, or educational attainment,” the report found. Pew surveyed 2,745 TikTok users for the new research.

TikTok’s US growth has been explosive—last year, the company touted 150 million US users on the platform, and it’s investing heavily in its stateside e-commerce business, with mixed results.

What else is in the report:

• 56% of all US adults between the ages of 18 and 34 are on TikTok, but only 52% of those have ever posted a video. More than two-thirds of users have never added any information to their TikTok bio.
• 85% said the content shown on their “For You” pages is at least “somewhat interesting.”
• The median US adult follows 154 accounts on the platform, but has just 36 followers.

Unrelated, but related: The platform has continued to draw the scorn of regulators. Earlier this week the European Union opened a formal investigation into TikTok, alleging that it may have breached its Digital Services Act, which requires tech platforms to be more transparent about their algorithms, and prohibits certain kinds of targeted advertising. The investigation will assess TikTok’s approach to child safety, its age verification tools, and whether its algorithms can create addictive “rabbit hole effects” on users.