The percentage of TikTok users who get their news from the popular video-sharing platform has nearly doubled since 2020, according to survey data released Wednesday by Pew Research. The data is in line with a larger cultural shift by consumers towards utilizing digital platforms for news, with roughly half of all Americans saying they get news from social media.
In 2020, 22% of TikTok users reported getting news from the app, but that surged to 43% in 2023, according to Pew.
Facebook is still the most popular social media platform for news consumption, with roughly three in 10 U.S. adults getting their news from the site. Nearly 25% get their news from YouTube, with Instagram, TikTok and X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — following in popularity. But TikTok has shown far more growth than any other platform since 2020, and that growth was consistent across all age demographics.
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
News consumption on platforms differed by gender. While women reported they were more likely to get their news from Nextdoor, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, men tended towards Reddit, X and YouTube.
The most major partisan differentiation noted by the study was that “the majority of regular news consumers on many sites are Democrats or lean Democratic,” adding that “there is no significant partisan difference among news consumers on Facebook, X or Nextdoor.”
TikTok debuted in China in 2016 before a worldwide launch in 2018. It has since soared in popularity in the U.S., even amid growing privacy concerns that have led to bans of the app on government devices and even statewide bans.
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