TikTok is a one-stop-shop for recipe inspo, viral dance trends, tin-foil-hat conspiracies, and, increasingly, political commentary. Now, it’s also where one in five Americans are getting their news.
That’s according to a Pew Research Center analysis published last week, which has tracked a dramatic uptick in news consumption on the platform, up from just 3% in 2020. “During that span, no social media platform we’ve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption,” Pew noted.
In Pew’s survey, 43% of adults under 30 said they regularly get their news on TikTok, up from 9% five years ago. But it’s not just younger people. A quarter of adults between the ages of 30 and 49 also regularly turn to TikTok as a news source, compared to just 2% in 2020.
This analysis is based on Pew’s survey of 5,153 U.S. adults between August 18 and 24.
While the researchers focused only on adult TikTok users, overall more than half of TikTok users (55%) now say they regularly get news on the platform, up from 22% in 2020. “TikTok is now on par with several other social media sites—including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Truth Social—in the share of its adult users who regularly get news there,” researchers wrote.
The tide on TikTok has been turning for some time, with more and more media outlets and independent journalists adapting to reach new audiences and doubling down on vertical video. These days, snappy, shareable content, delivered in 30 seconds or less, is far more likely to hook audiences’ shrinking attention spans than long form reporting.
The quality of this news content is another story. Since much of this content comes from individual creators, or newsfluencers, rather than established news organizations, fact and opinion can often be presented interchangeably, and misinformation can spread quickly.
News delivered directly to the FYP, courtesy of a highly individualized algorithm, has the problem of sinking people further and further into echo chambers of their own creation.
It then begs the question: What kind of news are we each consuming?
