Audience Engagement Platforms
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“TikTok was the only social media platform to show growth”: Attest releases UK and US Media Consumption Tracker 

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Attest, the consumer research platform has released the findings from its first Quarterly UK & US Media Consumption Tracker. The data provides continuous insights into how consumers’ habits across television, audio, news and social media continue to evolve in both countries. 

For publishers, the key trends are curated here, separated by US and UK audiences.

United States

Twitter achieves little growth in usage in Q.1

  • When compared with Q.4 2021, Twitter achieved a tiny 0.9 percentage point increase in weekly users by the end of Q.1 2022. 

Facebook, Instagram & most of all, Snapchat, suffer rise in ‘non-users’ this past quarter

  • Facebook and Instagram saw their numbers of non-users increase (by 2.3 and 2.5 percentage points respectively). However, Snapchat had the highest loss of users with a 3.3 percentage point increase in the number of people who never use it, leaving well over half of Americans (53.2%) as non-users.

TikTok is the only social media platform to grow in usage, and YouTube’s daily usage spikes

  • TikTok was the only social media platform to show growth amongst non-users. However, YouTube saw a significant spike in active, daily users – jumping by nearly 5 percentage points meaning 52% of the US public use the platform on a daily basis. Youtube Music is now almost neck and neck with Spotify.

Americans keep on reading (and paying) for content subscriptions 

  • Paid-for content subscriptions to media have held up, with subscription levels for digital content remaining exactly the same (at 14.3% of Americans). 

Listening habits across music streaming and podcasts are trending upwards

  • Podcasts are being listened to more frequently, with a 2.2 percentage point increase in people listening on a weekly basis.

News fatigue

  • Nearly a fifth of Americans (19.5%) do not engage with any mainstream digital media news outlets. Ever.

United Kingdom

Facebook and Instagram grow at a faster rate than their competitors

  • There has been a leap in daily usage across Facebook and Instagram in the UK, with 62% of Britons using Facebook on a daily basis, whilst 47% use Instagram every day. TikTok also showed user growth in the UK with the percentage of people who admitted to “never” using it falling by 4%.

Twitter struggles for users in the UK

  • Twitter recorded a disappointing performance, with the percentage of Britons who say they “never” use the platform standing at 40%.

Podcasts continue strong growth in the UK 

  • There is a 3.7 percentage point increase in people listening to podcasts “a few times a week” pointing to wider adoption of this audio format amongst the British public. Audiobook usage is falling, however, perhaps because of the high cost per title.

Spotify still rules as the most popular music streaming platform 

  • Spotify retains its place as the most popular music streaming platform amongst UK consumers, with 46% of Britain’s music lovers using the service. 

Subscriptions falling slightly

  • There have been slight decreases amongst the public in digital-only, print+digital and print-only subscriptions from Q4 to Q1. The vast majority of Britons do not pay for content subscriptions for either print or digital media (67%) and this figure has stayed static between quarters.