By 2022, Latin America will have 392.6 million social network users, second only to Asia. Although Facebook and Instagram will continue to occupy the first and second place of most used platforms, 2022 will be the year of TikTok in the region.
Known for its lip-syncing challenges, and dance videos, TikTok has already surpassed the 100 million user mark in Latin America and is expected to reach 136.1 million users by 2022, a 12.8% growth over the previous year. The forecast is in “Latin America Social Network Users 2022” report, carried out by eMarketer | Insider Intelligence, which shows that more than three out of ten Latin American internet users will be on TikTok this year.
Insider Intelligence pointed out TikTok‘s meteoric rise in Latin America: by 2020, the platform has become the third most used social network by Latin Americans, surpassing Twitter and Snapchat. By 2022, TikTok is expected to have almost twice as many users as Twitter and 3.5 times the user base of Snapchat.
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And Brazil, of course, will be TikTok‘s biggest market in the region. You can’t say it’s a big surprise, Brazilians are known for their fast and massive adoption of new social networks – the country will account for more than a third (36.6%) of all social network users in Latin America by 2022, with 143.7 million monthly users.
With regard to TikTok, it is estimated that the app will reach 52.3 million monthly Brazilian users this year. Mexico will be in the second position, but far behind, with 27.6 million monthly users.
Business-wise, social media goes hand in hand with e-commerce and is a primary tool for companies to engage their customers during their shopping journey. TikTok’s numbers put the platform as communication and consumer access channel that cannot be underestimated by brands.
“TikTok started off as a relatively unknown social platform, but it quickly took Latin America by storm,” said Matteo Ceurvels, Insider Intelligence’s senior analyst for Latin America and Spain. Now, Ceurvels said, companies can no longer exclude TikTok from their digital marketing strategies. “It needs to be center stage.”
What about the other social networks?
Instagram will continue to be the second most used social network by Latin Americans (behind Facebook) and also the second fastest growing (behind TikTok), due to the region’s younger population, larger than that of many developed countries. According to Insider Intelligence, Instagram will benefit from the stampede of younger users from Facebook, who will migrate to Instagram attrackted by Stories and Reels.
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Facebook, meanwhile, while holding the largest user base – 1.6 times larger than Instagram’s and 2.7 times larger than TikTok’s – will be the slowest growing social network in Latin America by 2022.
In Brazil, Facebook even recorded its first-ever decrease in total users in 2021, something that hadn’t happened since 2008, when Insider Intelligence started monitoring the platform’s metrics.
