A growing share of U.S. adults regularly get their news from TikTok, a trend driven by a surge in the platform’s popularity among adults under 30, according to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center.
The share of respondents who say they regularly get news from TikTok is at 17 percent, up approximately five-fold from 2020, when only 3 percent said the same, according to an analysis published Tuesday from a survey conducted July 15-Aug. 4.
Since 2020, every age group has seen a bump in those who say they get news regularly from the platform.
Thirty-nine percent of adults aged 18-29 say they regularly get news from TikTok, up from 9 percent in 2020. About a fifth, or 19 percent, of respondents ages 30-49 regularly get their news from TikTok, up from 2 percent in 2020.
Nine percent of 50- to 64-year-olds get news regularly from TikTok, up from 1 percent in 2020. And among adults 65 and older, 3 percent get news regularly from TikTok, up from less than a percentage point in 2020.
And more Americans turn to TikTok for news, an increasing percentage on the platform are using it for that purpose.
Today, 52 percent of TikTok users say they regularly get news there, up from 22 percent in 2020. Instagram has seen a similar increase among its users: 40 percent of its users today saying they go to Instagram regularly to get news, up from 28 percent in 2020.
YouTube has also seen a modest boost in the share of its users who say they get news there regularly, with 37 percent saying so in 2024 and 32 percent saying so in 2020.
There has been no change, compared to 2020, in the share of the platforms’ users who get news regularly from X, formerly Twitter, at 59 percent, and from Snapchat, at 19 percent.
The analysis comes as news organizations and elected officials have had to adapt to the public’s changing news consumption habits in order to reach users where they are. Former President Trump, Vice President Harris and President Biden each joined TikTok during their campaigns, despite having previously criticized aspects of the platform.
The survey included 10,658 U.S. adults and has a margin of sampling error of 1.2 percentage points.
