According to a report from app analytics firm App Annie, TikTok users now spend more time each month watching content than YouTube users. 

In the United States, ByteDance's app first surpassed YouTube in August of last year, with users watching over 24 hours of content per month as of June 2021, compared to 22 hours and 40 minutes on Google's video platform.

The Google-owned video giant has an estimated two billion monthly users, while TikTok's most recent public figures put its user base at around 700 million by mid-2020.

In the United Kingdom, the disparity is even more pronounced: TikTok surpassed YouTube in May of last year, and users there now watch nearly 26 hours of content per month, compared to less than 16 on YouTube.

However, because the figures only include Android phone viewers, they may not be representative of all mobile users. Caveats aside, they demonstrate TikTok's meteoric rise in just a few short years and are all the more impressive given that most of its videos are only three minutes long, compared to the ten-minute format preferred by many YouTubers.

Not to mention the fact that TikTok was threatened with being banned in the United States for much of 2020, despite tumultuous negotiations after Biden formally revoked Trump's executive orders earlier this year.

According to BBC News, YouTube is still ahead in terms of total time spent, owing to its two billion users versus TikTok's 700 million. YouTube is still number one in terms of time spent on Android phones among "Social and Entertainment Apps" as of the first half of this year, excluding iOS users and users of the app renamed Douyin in China, with TikTok coming in fifth behind three Facebook apps: Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

According to App Annie's data, users spend more money on YouTube than TikTok on both iOS and Android.

However, according to App Annie's findings, live-streaming apps, such as TikTok, are fueling an increase in money spent on creators. Tiktok allows users to tip creators with "coins" which are Tiktok's version of "bits" from Twitch, and YouTube also has a similar programme for live streams.

According to the report, live-streaming apps accounted for three-quarters of all money spent in the top 25 social apps in the first half of 2021.

Another winner from the previous year is Snapchat, according to the report.

App Annie's data suggests, the augmented-reality messaging app's downloads increased by nearly 30% year over year, and by 45 per cent when compared to two years ago.