Technology

TikTok loses the crown — here’s the app Gen Z is obsessed with now

Although TikTok has been a dominant player in social media in recent years, it no longer holds the top spot as the most popular app.

TikTok is no longer the most downloaded app of the year: this is the new favorite of Gen Z in the U.S.
Update:

Every month the most popular apps rack up tens of millions of downloads but the name at the top of the new list may surprise you.

A recent study from Backlinko looked into the most downloaded apps around the world last month, with some very interesting results. Their findings revealed that ChatGPT was the most popular app in terms of downloads in April 2025, with an astonishing 52 million total downloads in a single month.

That is more than the two most popular social networking apps - TikTok and Instagram - which each recorded 39 million downloads last month.

In terms of shopping apps, Temu was the biggest riser in April with 25 million new downloads. The Chinese-owned e-commerce company has drawn huge numbers of global customers but has also received criticism for data privacy and manufacturing concerns.

The creator of ChatGPT - OpenAI - is reportedly hoping to reach 1 billion global users by the end of this year and it’s current usage is incredibly high. The company has revealed that their website gets around 5.19 billion visits per month and around 15% of total users are American.

The growth of ChatGPT is not a big surprise but you may to shocked to learn how commonplace the technology has become in everyday life. A study from Pew Research Center found that around a quarter of teenagers have used ChatGPT for their schoolwork, double the amount using AI in 2023.

However their thoughts on the platform vary considerably based on the usage. The Pew study found that 54% of teenagers think that using ChatGPT to research new topics is acceptable, but only 18% believe that it’s fine to use the program to write essays.

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