1 in 5 Americans Regularly Get News on TikTok

A TikTok creator does interviews in New York City’s Washington Square Park on Jan. 17, 2025. (Alex Kent/Getty Images) TikTok is primarily known for short-form video sharing, but it has also become a common place for many people to get news. A fifth of U.S. adults regularly get news on TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey from August. That share is unchanged from 2025 but up from just 3% in 2020. Younger adults are far more likely than older adults to regularly get news on TikTok % of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok, by age group Note: The other response option was “No, I don’t regularly get news on this.” Only respondents who indicated that they use TikTok were asked if they regularly get news there. Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted Aug. 24-30, 2026. PEW RESEARCH CENTER TikTok is increasingly a place for news, especially among young U.S. adults % of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok, by age group U.S. adultsAges 18-2930-4950-6465+20203921<1202161863120221026104120231432157320241739199320252043251032026203925114 Note: Add note about the chart Source: Add source note here PEW RESEARCH CENTER Younger adults are especially likely to regularly get news on TikTok. Among Americans ages 18 to 29, around four-in-ten (39%) say they do this regularly. That compares with 25% of those ages 30 to 49, 11% of those ages 50 to 64 and 4% of those ages 65 and older. Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than White and Asian Americans to get news on TikTok. Roughly a third of Black (32%) and Hispanic (35%) adults regularly get news there, compared with 14% of both White and Asian adults. About this research We have updated this Pew Research Center analysis annually for the last few years to track the emergence of TikTok as a news source among Americans. Why did we do this? The Center regularly studies the platforms and social media sites Americans use to get news. This analysis is part of a broader effort to understand the changing ways Americans get news in the digital age and continues our work on news consumption online. How did we do this? We surveyed 5,166 U.S. adults from Aug. 24 to 30, 2026. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel. The survey is designed to represent the views of all U.S. adults. Read more about how we use our National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) to weight our social media data. Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology. There are also partisan differences. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (22%) are slightly more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners (15%) to regularly get news on TikTok. TikTok is one of the more widely used social media platforms in the United States. Overall, 37% of Americans say they use TikTok. That trails the shares who use YouTube (84%), Facebook (70%) and Instagram (51%). But more U.S. adults say they use TikTok than WhatsApp (33%), LinkedIn (31%), Reddit (25%) or X (18%). Looking specifically at U.S. adults who use TikTok, 53% say they regularly get news on the platform. That’s about the same as the share who said this in 2025 (55%) but well above the 22% who did so in 2020. Today, the share of TikTok users who get news there is similar to the shares of Facebook users (57%) and X users (57%) who regularly get news on those sites, and higher than the shares among users of other social media platforms. About half of U.S. adult TikTok users get news there, up from 22% in 2020 % of each social media site’s users who say they regularly get news there Note: The other response option was “No, I don’t regularly get news on this.” Only respondents who indicated that they use each site were asked if they regularly get news there. Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted Aug. 24-30, 2026. PEW RESEARCH CENTER About half of U.S. adult TikTok users get news there, up from 22% in 2020 % of each social media site’s users who say they regularly get news there FacebookYouTubeInstagramTikTokX (Twitter)RedditNextdoorLinkedInWhatsAppRumbleTruth SocialBluesky20205432282259421513202147302729553914142022443029335337231310202343323443533828171220244837405259332714164857202553414155573533154955382026574146535735452016535539 Note: The other response option was “No, I don’t regularly get news on this.” Only respondents who indicated that they use each site were asked if they regularly get news there. Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted Aug. 24-30, 2026. PEW RESEARCH CENTER Note: This is an update of a post originally published Nov. 15, 2023. Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology. Katerina Eva Matsa is a director of news and information research at Pew Research Center.