TikTok, which has already overtaken YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in terms of usage time by US adults, is now chasing Netflix, says a study at a time when the authorities are considering banning the Chinese social network altogether.

The platform, which belongs to the Chinese group ByteDance, first won over young people, but adults are also adopting it widely, especially since the covid-19 pandemic, underlines a report by Insider Intelligence, cited by Lusa and released this Thursday.

This year, "TikTok users aged 25 to 54 - 'millennials' and 'generation X' - will spend more than 45 minutes a day on the application, much more than the time spent by users of the same age group on other social networks," the market research company points out.

TikTok overtook industry giant YouTube (Google) in 2021 in time spent by adults on each platform.

By 2024, Insider Intelligence predicts that TikTok users over the age of 18 will spend more than 58 minutes a day on average on the social network, behind only Netflix (62 minutes) and far ahead of YouTube (48.7 minutes).

On the other hand, the efforts of California's social networks to imitate short-lived viral videos have had mixed effects, according to the analysis.

On YouTube, shorts "haven't stirred the waters", while reels from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, are having some success, but the time users spend watching them cannibalizes the time spent on the other formats, the main feed and stories, which show more ads and consequently bring in more money for the group.

The report also mentions the 'second screen' phenomenon, with users often being on TikTok while Netflix is playing in the background.

"Advertisers planning to buy advertising on Netflix should be aware that some viewers may be distracted to the point of abandoning their streaming platform," Insider Intelligence points out in the report.

These statistics show the importance of TikTok in the United States, where it has more than a hundred million users.

But its connection to ByteDance worries the US authorities, who fear that Beijing is using the social network to access confidential data or to manipulate public opinion.

TikTok has denied these intentions for years, but tensions between the two countries and, recently, the passage of an alleged Chinese "spy balloon" over the US, have brought back calls for the US stance to remain firm against China.

On Wednesday, a bill that could lead to a total ban on the platform in the United States was passed as an important milestone in the US Congress.

On Monday, the White House ordered federal agencies to ensure that TikTok is off their employees' official mobile devices within 30 days, after its ban was passed into law at the end of December.

Several US states and academic institutions have taken similar measures.

In Europe, the European Commission (EC), the Council of the European Union (EU), the European Parliament (EP), the Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the Economic and Social Council (ESC) have already announced that they will ban TikTok from their official mobile devices, at a time when they are trying to better protect themselves in the face of the increase in cyberattacks.