These charts show how many Americans are turning to TikTok for news

Oct 26, 2022

This article is published with permission from Pew Research Center.

In the US, 10% of those ages 30 to 49 get their news consumption through TikTok, new research finds. Image: Unsplash/Solen Feyissa

Katerina Eva Matsa

An associate director of journalism research, Pew Research Center.

Our Impact

What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Media, Entertainment and Sport?

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Media, Entertainment and Sport is affecting economies, industries and global issues

A hand holding a looking glass by a lake

Crowdsource Innovation

Get involved with our crowdsourced digital platform to deliver impact at scale

Stay up to date:

Media, Entertainment and Sport

The number of US adults who get their news from TikTok has tripled in the past two years, according to new data.
The platform's share of adult who say they regularly visit TikTok for news rose from 3% in 2020 to 10% in 2022.
This is because other social sites have either declined or stayed the same in terms of news consumption, says the Pew Research Center.
But, overall, Tiktok users remain far less likely than users of Twitter or Facebook to get news on the site.

A graph showing US adults in each age group who regularly get news from TikTok

The number of adults using TikTok for news has tripled in the past two years. Image: Pew Research Center.

A small but growing share of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on TikTok. This is in contrast with many other social media sites, where news consumption has either declined or stayed about the same in recent years.

In just two years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has roughly tripled, from 3% in 2020 to 10% in 2022.

The video-sharing platform has reported high earnings the past year and has become especially popular among teens – two-thirds of whom report using it in some way – as well as young adults.

Adults under 30 are the most likely group to say they regularly get news on TikTok. About a quarter of Americans in this age group (26%) say they regularly get news there, higher than in 2021 and 2020. This compares with 10% of those ages 30 to 49, 4% of those 50 to 64 and just 1% of those 65 and older.

Overall, TikTok users remain far less likely than users of Twitter or Facebook to get news on the site. Image: Pew Research Center.

More of TikTok’s U.S. adult users are getting news there as well. Currently, a third of TikTok users say they regularly get news on the site, up from 22% who said the same in 2020. Still, TikTok users remain far less likely than users of Twitter or Facebook to get news on the site.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.

Discover

How is the World Economic Forum shaping the future of media?

The World Economic Forum’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Sport enables business, government, and civil society to prepare for the next evolution of the internet. It addresses changing media business models, the responsible use of data, shifting technology paradigms, and ensures online safety as the nature of the internet evolves.

Global Coalition for Digital Safety is bringing together a diverse group of leaders to accelerate public-private cooperation to tackle harmful content online.
Through the Defining and Building the Metaverse initiative, the Forum is bringing together leaders from business, civil society, academia and government to define the parameters of an economically viable, interoperable, safe and inclusive metaverse, focusing on governance and economic and social value creation.

Have you read?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.