TikTok app downloads per yearU.S. southwest border encounters
TikTok app downloads per year and US southwest border encounters have, between 2018 and 2024, risen together at a correlation of 0.947. The two trends will inevitably be weaponized by a congressional hearing, which will inevitably misread the correlation as causation. The app and the encounter are not in dialogue. Every hearing, however, will discover them anyway.
TikTok app downloads grew from around 650 million in 2018 to over 3 billion cumulative by 2024, as the platform became the dominant short-form video format globally. US southwest border encounters rose from about 400,000 to over 2.4 million in the same window, driven by asylum-seeker flows, policy whiplash, and regional instability. The two trends reflect the same period of mobile-first population dynamics — both migration flows and cultural platforms accelerated during the same years — without any operational connection between the two.
Six years of two lines rising together can describe two entirely separate mobile-era trends sharing a calendar. The app and the encounter are both consequences of a more connected and more unstable world. Neither is the direct cause of the other.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “TikTok app downloads per year” vs “U.S. southwest border encounters” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
