A small but growing share of U.S. adults are regularly getting news on TikTok. In fact, since 2020, no social media platform we’ve studied has seen faster growth in the share of Americans who regularly turn to it for news, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.
In just four years, the share of adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has grown about fivefold, from 3% in 2020 to 17% in 2024.
TikTok, primarily known for short-form video sharing, is especially popular among teens – 63% of whom report ever using the platform – and young adults.
Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand the ways Americans get news in a digital age. We surveyed 10,658 U.S. adults from July 15 to Aug. 4, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Surveys were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and the survey methodology.
In the past, we have conducted similar research about Americans’ use of social media for news. This survey continues to explore the same topics, but our approach has evolved to use slightly different question wording, starting in our 2020 survey. As a result, some of these measures cannot be directly compared with findings prior to 2020. These changes in question wording reflect the Center’s efforts to improve the way we measure news consumption.
Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Young adults also stand out when it comes to turning to TikTok for news. Today, 39% of adults under 30 say they regularly get news there, compared with much smaller shares of adults ages 30 to 49 (19%), 50 to 64 (9%) and 65 and older (3%).
News consumption is also trending upward when looking at TikTok users, specifically. Around half of TikTok users (52%) now say they regularly get news there, up from 43% last year and just 22% in 2020. TikTok users are now more likely to get news from TikTok than Facebook users are to get news from Facebook. Still, TikTok users are less likely than users of X (formerly Twitter) to get news on the site.
Note: This is an update of a post originally published Nov. 15, 2023. Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology.
CORRECTION (Oct. 16, 2024): The topline for this survey previously included incorrect figures (refer to topline for details). These have been updated in the topline and do not affect the overall findings in this analysis. Nothing on this page has been changed.
