TikTok has spent years being shorthand for the Gen Z platform. Teens, trends, dances, slang you have to Google, the stereotype is pretty baked in. So it’s easy for marketers and media buyers to mentally file TikTok under “young audience” and move on. There’s just one problem: the people actually using it don’t fit that picture nearly as neatly anymore.
Millennials, not teens, now make up TikTok’s largest U.S. audience. Comscore counted 36.5 million U.S. visitors ages 25–34 in May, compared with 24.5 million ages 18–24. And it’s not just eyeballs: 47% of TikTok users ages 25–44 say they’ve purchased something they first heard about on the platform.
TikTok may speak fluent Gen Z, but that doesn’t mean Gen Z owns the room. The platform grew up right alongside its users, and the people scrolling between videos now have jobs, disposable income, kids, mortgages, and votes. Platform stereotypes age faster than audience data.
