TikTok has become an important news source for many Americans. About half of TikTok users (52%) – equivalent to 17% of all U.S. adults – say they regularly get news on the site.
But many TikTok users appear not to be actively following journalists or news media outlets on the site. In fact, fewer than 1% of all the TikTok accounts that Americans follow belong to these types of institutional news sources.
This raises an apparent contradiction: How are so many U.S. TikTok users getting news there if such a small share of the accounts they follow belong to journalists or news outlets?
Recent Pew Research Center studies show that TikTok users tend to get news from a variety of sources, and often without seeking it out. Here’s what that research shows:
Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand how Americans get news on TikTok. The data for this analysis comes from several recent Pew Research Center studies, including a survey of TikTok news consumers, a report on news influencers and an investigation of who Americans follow on the site.
More information about these studies and their methodologies, including the sample sizes and field dates, can be found at the links in the text.
Some of the research in this analysis is from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Find related reports online at https://www.pewresearch.org/pew-knight/.
Explore Americans’ social media habits and attitudes
This analysis draws from several Pew Research Center reports on Americans’ use of and attitudes about TikTok, based on surveys conducted in 2024. For more information, read:
- America’s News Influencers (Pew-Knight Initiative)
- How Americans Get News on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram (Pew-Knight Initiative)
- Social Media and News Fact Sheet
- Who U.S. Adults Follow on TikTok
Journalists represent a tiny fraction of the TikTok accounts that Americans follow – but that’s only part of the story. Looking across all accounts followed by a representative sample of U.S. adult TikTok users, only 0.4% are journalists or media outlets. But 14% of adult TikTok users still follow five or more accounts that fall into this category. In other words, many TikTok users follow institutional news sources alongside other types of accounts.
Accounts that are not linked to newsrooms also post about news – and can have wide audiences. Just 5% of accounts that TikTok users follow posted news-related content in their five most recent posts, while 10% posted about politics, according to a Pew Research Center study conducted in summer 2024. But much larger shares of adult TikTok users follow at least five accounts that posted about news (41%) or politics (53%) during the study period.
Many TikTok accounts mix in news with a variety of other topics, from celebrity gossip to jokes and memes. Some 43% of accounts that discussed news or politics during our 2024 study period also posted about entertainment and pop culture, and just over a third (36%) also posted humorous content. TikTok users could get news from these accounts even if they do not primarily or solely focus on current events.
TikTok news consumers report getting news from a variety of sources, not just journalists. Among U.S. adults who say they regularly get news on TikTok, just as many say they ever get news on the site from influencers or celebrities (68%) as from news outlets or journalists (67%), according to a March 2024 survey from the Pew-Knight Initiative. And an even higher share (84%) get news from other people they don’t know personally who are not influencers or celebrities, news outlets or journalists, or advocacy or nonprofit organizations.
What is a news influencer?
We use the term “news influencers” to refer to individuals who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) or YouTube. News influencers can be journalists who are or were affiliated with a news organization or independent content creators, but they must be people and not organizations.
Refer to the 2024 news influencer study’s methodology for more about how we identified news influencers.
In a separate 2024 Pew-Knight Initiative study, 37% of TikTok users said they regularly get news from news influencers (on any of the social media sites they use). And most news influencers on TikTok (84%) have no background or affiliation with a news organization.
Though news is not the main reason many TikTok users visit the site, most still encounter news-related content there. Most TikTok users (95%) say they use the site because it’s entertaining, while 41% cite getting news as a reason, according to our March 2024 survey. And most users follow accounts that post about pop culture and entertainment.
While a majority of TikTok users see news discussed on the site, it often looks different than traditional news: 84% report seeing funny posts about current events, and 80% see opinion posts about news. Smaller majorities say they see news articles (57%) or information about breaking news as it’s happening (55%). In total, nine-in-ten TikTok users say they ever see at least one of these types of news on the site.
TikTok users may be getting news from accounts they do not follow. Much of what users see on their For You page comes from recommendations from the TikTok algorithm. It’s unclear how much the algorithm highlights content from accounts that users follow versus accounts they do not follow.
In our 2024 study of news influencers, we found that 28% of TikTok users who say they regularly get news from news influencers (on any social media site, not just TikTok) also say they do not follow or subscribe to any news influencers. Another 13% say they are not sure.
TikTok is especially popular among young Americans, who tend to be more passive consumers of news overall. Younger U.S. adults stand out from their older counterparts in several ways when it comes to news consumption:
- Getting news from news influencers: 37% of adults under 30 say they regularly get news from news influencers, compared with just 7% of Americans 65 and older.
- Getting news on TikTok: 39% of adults under 30 say they regularly get news on TikTok, while just 3% of those 65 and older do so.
- Following accounts in general on TikTok: The typical (median) TikTok user ages 18 to 34 follows more than three times as many accounts as the typical user who is 50 or older.
This is in line with broader findings about the age divide in getting news on social media. However, older age groups are more likely to actively look for political news, according to an April 2024 survey. Roughly three-quarters of American adults under 30 say they mostly get political news when they happen to come across it, while just a quarter say they seek it out. By contrast, 60% of those 65 and older actively seek out political news.
