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A major shift in the U.S. app economy has just taken place. In the second quarter of this year, U.S. consumer spending in non-game mobile apps surpassed spending in mobile games for the first time in May 2022, and the trend continued in June. This drove the total revenue generated by non-game apps higher for the quarter, reaching about $3.4 billion on the U.S. App Store, compared with $3.3 billion spent on mobile games.

After the shift in May, 50.3% of the spending was coming from non-game apps by June 2022, according to new findings in a report from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. By comparison, games had accounted for more than two-thirds of total spending on the U.S. App Store just five years ago.

The trend was limited to the U.S. App Store and was not seen on Google Play, however. In Q2, games accounted for $2.3 billion in consumer spending on Google Play in the U.S., while non-game apps accounted for about $1 billion. about the new data here.

Kids and teens now spend more time on TikTok than YouTube

Image Credits: Nur Photo (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

A study of 400,000 families performed by parental control software maker Qustodio found that kids and teens ages 4-18 now spend more time watching videos on TikTok than they do watching YouTube — and that’s been the case since June 2020, in fact. That month, TikTok overtook YouTube for the first time, as this younger demographic began averaging 82 minutes per day on TikTok versus an average of 75 minutes per day on YouTube.

YouTube had still been ahead in 2019 as kids and teens were spending an average of 48 minutes on the platform on a global basis, compared with 38 minutes on TikTok. But with the shift in usage that took place in June 2020, TikTok came out on top for 2020 as a whole, with an average of 75 minutes per day, compared with 64 minutes for YouTube.

In the years since, TikTok has continued to dominate with younger users. By the end of 2021, kids and teens were watching an average of 91 minutes of TikTok per day compared with just 56 minutes per day spent watching YouTube, on a global basis.

Likely aware of this threat, YouTube launched its own short-form platform called Shorts, which it now claims has topped 1.5 billion logged-in monthly users. The company believes this will push users toward its long-form content — but so far, that hasn’t happened, it seems.

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by the pandemic has slowed down. But overall, the app economy is continuing to grow, having produced a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS and Google Play last year was $133 billion, and consumers downloaded 143.6 billion apps.

This Week in Apps offers a way to keep up with this fast-moving industry in one place with the latest from the world of apps, including news, updates, startup fundings, mergers and acquisitions, and much more.

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TikTok is getting a rating system

Some TikToks are too racy or mature for younger teens — a problem TikTok aims to address with the upcoming launch of a new content ratings system. The “Content Levels” system, as it will be called, is meant to provide a means of classifying content on the video app — similar to how movies, TV shows and video games today feature age ratings.

TikTok acknowledged some content on its app may contain “mature or complex themes that may reflect personal experiences or real-world events that are intended for older audiences.” It will work to assign these sorts of videos a “maturity score” that will block them from being viewed by younger users. Not all videos will be rated, however. The goal will be to rate videos that get flagged for review and those that are gaining virality. Initially, the system will focus on preventing inappropriate content from reaching users ages 13 to 17, TikTok says, but will become a broader system over time.

The launch follows a 2021 congressional inquiry into social apps, including TikTok and others, which focused on how their algorithmic recommendation systems could be promoting harmful content, like eating disorder content, to younger users. TikTok has also been making headlines for its promotion of dangerous and destructive viral stunts, like kids destroying public school bathrooms, shooting each other with pellet guns or jumping off milk crates, among other things.

TikTok, like other social apps, is in hot water over the potential negative impacts to minors using its service. But it’s under particular scrutiny since the reveal that parent company ByteDance — in China — was accessing U.S. TikTok user data. Alongside the maturity ratings, TikTok says it will also launch content filters that will let users block videos with hashtags or certain words from their feeds.

For all its ills, TikTok has more developed parental controls than its …read more

https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/16/this-week-in-apps-elon-wants-out-tiktoks-content-ratings-a-new-milestone-for-subscription-revenue/