Should K-Beauty Seeding Lean Toward TikTok for US Women in Their Twenties? What Pew's 2026 Survey Shows

A K-beauty brand selling to US women in their twenties does not need to move its seeding list to TikTok. More adults 18 to 29 and more women use Instagram than TikTok in Pew Research Center's 2026 survey, published Oct. 19, and Instagram has led in all four surveys since 2023.

TikTok still earns a place on the list. It leads on how often people use it, at least among teens, and its creator content drew more attention in 2025. Send creators to both apps and let month-one views set the month-two split.

In short

• Instagram reaches 79% of adults 18 to 29 and 56% of women in 2026, against 65% and 43% for TikTok, and it has led both groups in every survey since 2023.

• Income and education move the balance most. Households earning $100,000 or more use Instagram at twice TikTok's rate, and households under $30,000 use the two about equally.

• Split month one by your customer group's usage ratio. Re-split month two by median views per post on each app.

Is TikTok closing the gap among young adults and women?

Every year since 2023, Pew has asked a national sample of US adults whether they ever use each platform, and the 2026 round reached 5,511 adults between Jan. 30 and June 18.

Instagram's 2026 lead is 14 points among adults 18 to 29 and 13 among women, far wider than Pew's margins of error for those groups (±5.3 and ±2.3 points). TikTok's gains from 2025 to 2026, 2 points and 1 point, sit inside those margins, so they do not show real growth. Pew publishes age and gender separately and has no figure for women 18 to 29 alone. Since both groups lean the same way, women in their twenties most likely use both apps heavily, with Instagram slightly ahead.

What is the case for sending more creators to TikTok?

Pew's question only asks whether someone ever uses an app, and frequency is where TikTok pulls ahead. In Pew's 2025 survey of teens 13 to 17, the next group to reach their twenties, 21% said they are on TikTok almost constantly. For Instagram, 12% said the same.

Attention to creator content has favored TikTok too, at least recently. Traackr, an influencer data company, compared January to October 2025 with the same months of 2024 and found attention to US creator content up 18% on TikTok and down 14% on Instagram. The same company's figures for the first half of 2024 pointed the other way: video views on Instagram beauty creator content rose 68%.

So the leading platform changes from one year to the next. A brand that bets the whole list on one app is betting on this year's leader staying in front. Splitting the list and rebalancing with your own results is the safer plan.

What happened in BAZZAAL campaigns that used both apps?

Views can tilt far more than usage rates suggest. In BAZZAAL's seeding for GAMTAN, an innerwear brand, US creators published 24 posts, exactly 12 on Instagram and 12 on TikTok. Instagram drew 98.4% of the 805,913 total views.

MEDIHEAL's Amazon Prime Day seeding leaned the same way. BAZZAAL featured eight posts from that campaign, four on each app, with more than 1.25 million combined views, and the four Instagram posts alone passed 1.2 million.

Two campaigns cannot prove that Instagram always wins. They do show that an even post count can still produce lopsided views, so the usage ratio is only a starting point for month one.

Which customers lean further toward Instagram?

Age moves the two apps together. Use of both falls with age, so between 18 and 64 the balance between them barely shifts.

Income and education pull them apart. As household income rises, Instagram climbs and TikTok falls, from roughly even below $30,000 to a two-to-one Instagram lead at $100,000 and up. College graduates use Instagram at more than twice the rate of TikTok. These income and education figures cover adults of all ages.

A premium line still needs TikTok creators. Numerator surveyed US K-beauty buyers in June 2026 and found them 27% more likely to be high-income ($80,000 or more) and 27% more likely to use TikTok. A product aimed at higher-income shoppers can open with a larger Instagram share and leave the rest to month-one results.

How should a brand split seeding between Instagram and TikTok?

BAZZAAL runs gifted seeding, so the platform mix comes down to how many creators are picked from each app. BAZZAAL recommends four steps.

1. Split month one by your customer group's usage ratio. For customers 18 to 29, a list of 100 becomes 55 Instagram creators and 45 TikTok creators. For households earning $100,000 or more, it becomes 67 and 33.

2. Set month two at the midpoint between the month-one plan and the ratio of median views per post on each app. Medians matter here because one or two breakout posts can skew a total. Suppose month one ran 67 on Instagram and 33 on TikTok, and median views per post split 85% to Instagram and 15% to TikTok. Month two then runs 76 and 24. A program that rebuilds its creator list every month, like BAZZAAL's program with SKIN1004, can repeat this each month.

3. Check the posting rate on each app before you re-split. The posting rate is the share of creators who received product and posted at least once, and BAZZAAL plans around about 70%, a conservative figure from past campaigns. If one app falls well below that, weak views there may trace back to creator selection, so review that app's selection criteria first.

4. If you sell on TikTok Shop, look at orders per creator as well. Keep creators who drove orders, even when their views were low.

FAQ

Can the 2023 figures be compared with later years?

Only with care. Pew ran the 2023 survey by web and mail and added phone from 2024 on. On the same method, TikTok use went from 59% to 63% to 65% among adults 18 to 29 between 2024 and 2026, and from 39% to 42% to 43% among women. Instagram was higher in each of those years.

Should YouTube be part of the split?

YouTube reaches 95% of adults 18 to 29, and Pew's 2025 report found 66% of that age group using it daily. Every BAZZAAL seeding case that discloses its platform ran on Instagram or TikTok, so this post compares those two. To add YouTube, start from the ratio of all three usage rates.

Why is Pinterest missing?

Pew did not ask about Pinterest in 2025 or 2026. In 2024, the last year it did, 36% of adults and 51% of women used it.

Related reading: How to Choose Creators for a US Seeding Campaign · K-Beauty on TikTok Shop US: $980M in Q2 2026, 7 of Top 10 Korean · How K-Beauty Brands Reach US College Sororities

Sources

1. Americans' Use of Social Media in 2026. Pew Research Center, Oct. 19, 2026. 5,511 US adults surveyed Jan. 30 to June 18, 2026. Usage by age, gender, income and education in 2026; YouTube at 95% of adults 18 to 29.

2. 2026 survey methodology. Pew Research Center. Margin of error ±1.8 points overall, ±5.3 for ages 18 to 29 (540 respondents) and ±2.3 for women (3,082 respondents).

3. Platform use by year, CSV. Pew Research Center. All-adult figures for 2023 to 2026 and the note on the change in survey mode.

4. 2023 edition of the fact sheet, web archive copy. Pew Research Center. 5,733 adults surveyed May 19 to Sept. 5, 2023, by web and mail. Instagram use among women in 2023 (54%).

5. 2024 edition of the fact sheet, web archive copy. Pew Research Center. 5,626 adults surveyed Feb. 1 to June 10, 2024, by web, mail and phone. 2024 use among adults 18 to 29 and women; Pinterest.

6. Americans' Social Media Use 2025. Pew Research Center, Nov. 20, 2025. 2025 use among adults 18 to 29 and women; daily YouTube use by 66% of adults 18 to 29.

7. 2023 survey report: Americans' Social Media Use. Pew Research Center, Jan. 31, 2024. TikTok use among adults 18 to 29 and women in the 2023 survey.

8. Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025. Pew Research Center, Dec. 9, 2025. 1,458 US teens surveyed Sept. 25 to Oct. 9, 2025. On TikTok almost constantly: 21%; on Instagram almost constantly: 12%.

9. K-Beauty Category Surpasses $2 Billion in Sales. Numerator press release, July 28, 2026. Survey of 2,300+ K-beauty buyers fielded June 15 to 16, 2026. Buyers 27% more likely to be high-income ($80k+) and 27% more likely to use TikTok.

10. Creator Advantage 2026. Traackr. Attention (VIT) to US creator content, January to October 2025 compared with the same months of 2024: TikTok +18%, Instagram -14%.

11. Engagement rising for beauty creators' sponsored content. Traackr, Aug. 8, 2024. Video views on Instagram beauty creator content up 68% in the first half of 2024.

12. GAMTAN posture bra seeding case study. BAZZAAL. 24 US creator posts (12 on Instagram, 12 on TikTok); Instagram drew 98.4% of 805,913 views; top video 529,720 views. Posting-rate definition and the roughly 70% planning figure.

13. MEDIHEAL Amazon Prime Day seeding case study. BAZZAAL. Campaign with global creators. Eight featured posts (four on Instagram, four on TikTok) passed 1.25 million combined views; the four Instagram posts passed 1.2 million.

14. SKIN1004 creator seeding case study. BAZZAAL. Creator list rebuilt every month; Instagram and TikTok in 2025 to 2026.

15. AMUSE and HINCE case studies. BAZZAAL. Platform used (Instagram).