A closer look at Americans’ experiences with news on TikTok
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TikTok has become an important news source for many Americans. About half of TikTok users (52%) – equivalent to17% of all U.S. adults– say they regularly get news on the site.
However 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, often without seeking it out. Here’s what that research shows: Explore Americans’ social media habits and attitudes
This analysis draws from several Pew Research Center reports on Americans’ use of and attitudes toward TikTok, based on surveys conducted in 2024. For more information, read:
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. 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). 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.
TikTok's expected Sunday shutdown poses the biggest threat to the universe of small- and medium-sized firms and so-called influencers who depend on the short-form video site for their livelihood, while big brands are expected to move to other sites.
TikTok says its U.S. site generates billions for businesses selling candies, beauty products, clothes, and other consumer goods. But now, that economy is under threat. The Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the law banning TikTok in the United States on national security grounds ahead of a blackout this weekend.
After the ruling President-elect Donald Trump said he would make a decision on TikTok, without providing details.
As a marketing tool for businesses, Bytedance's TikTok generates revenue for itself, and for many of its users and merchants, through sponsorships and by collecting fees on sales.
Many TikTok users are paid to be brand ambassadors for companies, selling merchandise and affiliate partnerships where users are paid commissions by companies when audiences purchase items linked on their social profiles. TikTok also compensates some creators for making videos.
Those who receive revenue from TikTok also include startups, consumer companies and bloggers cashing in on the platform’s massive reach of up to 170 million Americans.
For example, small- and medium-sized food and beverage businesses, which saw revenue increase by $4.1 billion in 2023 from marketing and advertising on the app, stand to lose the most, according to estimates by economic advisory firm Oxford Economics. That data was commissioned by TikTok.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in a video posted to the app on Friday that seven million American businesses earn a living on the platform.
The video platform helped small and medium businesses lift their sales by $14.7 billion in 2023
For Mama V's Candy, TikTok Shop, the e-commerce arm of Bytedance's video platform, changed the trajectory of the business, said owner Valerie Verzwyvelt.
"We have pretty much stayed viral since the beginning of the TikTok shop launch last year," said Verzwyvelt. The company, which sells extremely sour candies, made $6 million in 2024 and has sold close to 300,000 units on the app, she said.
"We are on our second expansion," she said, a decision the Pineville, Louisiana-based company made before the reality of the Jan. 19th deadline set in. "I have to rebuild my business now."
Sven Greany, co-owner of California-based independent beauty brand Simply Mandys, said that a TikTok ban would bring his business to a “screeching halt” after a record holiday shopping season.
Simply Mandys made more than $20 million in sales in 2024 on TikTok Shop with the help of livestreaming and Greany said he never fretted the app's ties to China. Ninety-five percent of the company’s total sales come from shoppers on the platform, he said.
However, the company has plans to shift its marketing to Instagram once TikTok is no longer available.
But TikTok's privacy policy blocks sellers from accessing shopper emails, addresses, and other information that could be useful for marketing outside of the platform. Essentially, if TikTok disappears, so do Simply Mandys’ customers, Greany said.
Other businesses are holding sales and dropping prices to clear out inventory if traffic to their shops comes to an abrupt end on Sunday.
But that's not stopping some influencers from recommending products as they look to cash out ahead of the ban.
"These TikTok shops are mass 'clearance' their products in anticipation of the ban, so I'm linking some clearance products that I love for skincare," one user told her 65,000 followers.
Beyond commissions, a TikTok influencer with 10,000 to 100,000 followers can potentially earn $2,000 per brand campaign, according to Lithuania-based influencer marketing agency Billo. For some of TikTok's top U.S. creators, the entirety of their income will come to a halt, while the major companies they've partnered with a pivot to other platforms, such as YouTube (GOOGL.O), opens new tab or Meta's (META.O), opens new tab Instagram.
Oxford Economics said that small- and medium-business-activity on TikTok contributed $24.2 billion, or a small sliver of the overall U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023, while supporting 224,000 jobs. Reuters could not independently verify those estimates.
Yuriy Boykiv, chief executive of e-commerce consultancy Front Row, said his clients made contingency plans to shift their marketing spending to other platforms that have similar short-form videos including Instagram and YouTube.
“Every client has known about this possibility of TikTok going away since April of 2024, so everybody has done some preparation,” Boykiv said. Front Row’s clients include Procter & Gamble’s (PG.N), opens new tab for haircare brand Ouai, and LVMH’s (LVMH.PA), opens a new tab for Sephora, according to its website.
“We go where our community is and right now that includes TikTok. If they shift to other platforms in the future, we’ll be right there with them,” Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer at e.l.f. Beauty said in a statement to Reuters.
Mitchell Halliday, the founder and creative director of British beauty brand Made By Mitchell, which launched on TikTok Shop U.S. at the end of August, started selling on TikTok Shop in the UK in 2022 and became the first British beauty brand to hit $1 million in sales in one day on the platform.
"TikTok is the hub of beauty nowadays. It used to be YouTube, then it was Instagram, and now it is TikTok," Halliday said.
TikTok fans in the U.S. are racing to secure alternatives and safeguard their digital empires ahead of a looming shutdown on Sunday, evoking the chaos of India's 2020 ban that erased the app from the lives of 200 million users overnight.
While the U.S. ban has been debated for months, India acted swiftly in June 2020 to block TikTok and nearly 60 other Chinese apps over national security concerns, stripping many creators of their main source of income and shattering a digital community.
The disruption forced content creators to rebuild their followings and businesses on new homegrown apps and established platforms such as Meta-owned (META.O), opens a new tab Instagram, which emerged as a big winner of the ban. While top influencers successfully made the switch and even expanded their audiences, smaller creators struggled to achieve the same success.
Gaurav Arora, who had 10.8 million followers on TikTok and bears an uncanny resemblance to Indian cricketer Virat Kohli, said he had to act quickly.
"I used to earn between 100,000 and 200,000 Indian rupees ($1,155 to $2,310) per month on TikTok," said Arora, who shifted to platforms such as YouTube where he now boasts 11.3 million subscribers.
The vacuum left by TikTok drove a surge toward domestic platforms like Moj and Josh, especially in India's smaller towns and rural areas, where TikTok had transformed locals into stars, showcasing everything from dance routines to personal stories.
Moj and Josh launched just a month after the ban, have seen lifetime downloads of roughly 360 million and 308 million, respectively, in the country, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
"TikTok in India catered to every demography and every type of user, not just tier-1 cities. That's why other applications like Moj were quickly able to take advantage of the ban," said Priya Adivarekar, a digital creator and visiting faculty at Xavier Institute of Communications in Mumbai.
In the U.S., a similar trend is unfolding as millions of "TikTok Refugees" sign up for the Chinese social media app RedNote.
However, experts caution that the user experience on these new apps often falls short of what TikTok had provided, allowing U.S. tech giants to fill the gap. Instagram Reels, a TikTok-like service launched in August 2020 just months after the Chinese app was banned in India, has found its biggest audience in the country.
"The only beneficiary (of the ban), if there was any clear beneficiary from this, did seem to be Instagram," said Apar Gupta, observer trustee of Internet Freedom Foundation, an Indian advocacy group.
"The greater loss was to the people of India. ByteDance completely pulled out of India. You didn't have people having the ability to engage in content or a creator economy to the same extent that others had," he added.
While TikTok's overall impact on India's economy before the ban is unclear, the company estimates that it drove $15 billion in revenue for U.S. small businesses in 2023 and contributed about $24 billion to the world's largest economy.
"For top influencers, these platform disruptions matter a little less, especially since they are already present on a bunch of platforms," said Aditya Vashistha, assistant professor of Information Science at Cornell University.
"The impact on the micro-influencers and the mid-tier influencers is going to be much stronger. I see similar ripple effects both in the U.S. and in India."
@dailymail TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has thanked President-elect Trump for his efforts to keep the app alive despite the Supreme Court upholding the potential ban of TikTok on Friday. TikTok is set to be banned in the U.S. within the next 48 hours, starting Sunday. Visit DailyMail.com to continue watching our TikTok content and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat and X. 🎥 TikTok/tiktok #news#socialmedia#trump#tiktok♬ original sound - Daily Mail
