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In its infancy, TikTok was often described as a dance video app for teenagers. By 2025, it is a juggernaut with 170 million users in the United States and, according to the Department of Justice, a national security threat that must be eliminated.
The scene’s path from weird dance apps to federal ban targets is covered with recipes, personal dramas, micro trends, new entries in the popular dictionary and overnight megastars — and also judicial issues, hearings of the Senate and finally, and watched a lot of cases of the Supreme Court.
Here’s a timeline of the app’s meteoric rise, and a reminder of the videos that dominated your algorithm, whether you liked it or not.
2012
Zhang Yiming, a Chinese entrepreneur, founded ByteDance. He reportedly sketched the rough concept of what would become TikTok on the back of a napkin.
2014
JULY
Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang launched Musical.ly. The co-founders turned the platform from an educational app into a lip-sync app, allowing users to make 15-second videos singing along to popular songs.
2015
JULY
Musical.ly takes the top spot in the Apple app store in the US.
2016
September
ByteDance has launched Douyin, a short video app, in China. It became the most popular app of its kind in the country and was the forerunner of TikTok. Douyin can only be used in China, and the authorities there use the app to spread propaganda.
OCTOBER
A handful of “musers” — short for Musical.ly users — appear on the cover of Billboard, declaring that the app is “changing the music industry.” Most of the cover stars are children.
2017
September
ByteDance launched TikTok in Indonesia.
November
ByteDance is buying Musical.ly, and its 60 million users in the US and Europe, for around $1 billion.
2018
August
Musical.ly is a sunset when the app integrates with TikTok. US users are automatically redirected to the new app.
November
TikTok surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in monthly downloads for the first time.
2019
february
TikTok agrees to pay $5.7 million to settle children’s privacy claims.
Rattata! Rattata! Ah.
JULY
Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” has become an inescapable earworm thanks to TikTok. Yeehaw!
December
The US Department of Defense is warning members of the military to remove TikTok from their work and personal devices. Soon after, the Marine Corps began blocking the app from government-issued devices.
Hype House, the home of TikTok’s biggest stars, is taking shape. It and the so-called collaboration houses are places where the content of the TikTokers can be found and support each other’s professional work as creators.
2020
february
Renegade, perhaps the most popular dance on TikTok, became a metaphor when users across the app’s videos did the choreography without crediting Jalaiah Harmon, the Atlanta teenager who created the move. .
MARCH
Curtis Roach’s became the anthem for people at home during the pandemic lockdown, as more users joined the app. Tyga is producing it as a single.
A jingle for Russian cereal — it sounds like “mi pan su su sum” — has become a favorite of the app.
September
The Trump administration has announced plans to ban several Chinese mobile apps, including TikTok. At the end of the month, a federal judge rules against the ban.
Nathan Apodaca introduced users to a video of himself skateboarding to a Fleetwood Mac song and drinking Ocean Spray Cran-Raspberry juice. Later, the label gave him a new truck and the song “Dreams” returned to the charts.
November
Charli D’Amelio, a teenager best known for filming dance videos in her bedroom, has become the most followed user on the app with 100 million followers.
December
Musical theater kids and adults create community-written TikTok music based on the Disney Pixar movie “Ratatouille.”
A silly video of a user named Bella Poarch headbanging to the song “M to the B” has been crowned the most viewed TikTok of the year with half a billion views.
June
Khaby Lame, a Senegalese-Italian creator, became the most followed creator on TikTok by responding to random hacks.
A wannabe “Saturday Night Live” actress was roasted.
JULY
Teens dress up as “peacemakers” in full costume to attend the premiere of “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”
A brightly colored food additive known as Pink Sauce is funny, entertaining and disgusting.
September
An elementary school student from Brooklyn says she loves her favorite food: “It’s corn!”
The Food and Drug Administration, no good at TikTok sarcasm, has issued a very serious warning about cooking chicken in NyQuil.
More and more young people are using TikTok as a search engine, going ahead of Google Search.
OCTOBER
For the negroni. Wrong. With Prosecco. Amazing.
The Biden administration has said it wants Congress to take more action against TikTok.
June
The Grimace milkshake, a purple McDonald’s promotional drink, inspires a variety of funny, yet hilarious videos.
JULY
During the Hollywood strike, SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, told activists that crossing the picket line would result in them being disqualified from the union.
Girls’ dinners appeal to snack lovers, but also encourage discussion about unhealthy eating.
Yes, yes, yes. Ice cream, very good! PinkyDoll inspires copycats around the world to pretend to be a video gamer for hours. He said he earned between $2,000 and $3,000 per stream.
August
As travel heats up again, Americans and Europeans battle it out online.
We all live on the “Bass Planet”.
September
We learn how often men think about the Roman Empire.
TikTok offers the TikTok Shop in the United States, allowing users to buy clothes, makeup and other items and ends directly in the application.
The bucolic dream of the 1950s became the preferred lifestyle of the tradwife.
December
Employers came to Luigi Mangione’s defense after he was accused of murdering a health insurance executive.
2025
January
Bad Bunny’s “Most Puerto Rican Album Yet” is a hit with abuelos and abuelas.
Lawyers for TikTok and its creators are arguing before the Supreme Court that the ban on the platform violates the First Amendment.
As TikTok’s future becomes uncertain, some are pulling out of Red Note, a video-sharing app developed in China.
Hank Sanders contributed to the report.
