"Not Just Doing Challenges"... 43% of US TikTok Users Watch News

Pew Research Center Survey of 8,832 People
'Checking News on X and Facebook' Declines Over 3 Years

A survey revealed that 43% of Americans using TikTok, a Chinese short-form video platform, use it to check the news. This response rate has nearly doubled over the past three years.

On the 15th (local time), the U.S. public opinion research firm Pew Research Center released the results of a survey conducted from September 25 to October 1, targeting 8,842 U.S. adults regarding their use of social networking services (SNS) for news consumption.

Among all respondents, the SNS most frequently used regularly for news was Facebook. Thirty percent said they accessed news through Facebook. Twenty-six percent said they used YouTube for news, showing a slight difference from Facebook. Following that, 16% and 14% of respondents said they regularly accessed news through Instagram and TikTok, respectively.

However, when asked whether they used a specific SNS solely for the purpose of viewing news rather than other activities, the results were quite different. Among TikTok users, 43% said they used TikTok to check the news. In 2020, this figure was only 22%, nearly doubling in three years.

The percentage of people who said they used Instagram for news also increased from 28% in 2020 to 34% this year. Additionally, the proportion of those who viewed news on Twitch rose slightly from 11% to 17% during the same period. Conversely, the percentage of users who accessed X (formerly Twitter) for news decreased from 59% to 53% over three years. Facebook also saw a decline in this rate from 54% to 43%.

Regarding this situation, the U.S. media Axios diagnosed that "traditional news outlets face a situation where they must strive to secure readers, surpassing SNS."

The Pew Research Center also found that the types of SNS used for news consumption differ by gender.

For Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, the proportion of female news consumers was higher than males, at 62%, 59%, and 58%, respectively. Conversely, on Reddit, X, and YouTube, the proportion of male news consumers was higher than females, at 67%, 62%, and 58%, respectively.

Furthermore, the Pew Research Center reported that, in this survey, the proportion of Democratic supporters who checked news via SNS was generally higher than that of Republican supporters.

Meanwhile, SNS platforms like TikTok have a high proportion of user-generated news content and strong algorithms, making them vulnerable to misinformation. Accordingly, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have pointed out that TikTok reinforces confirmation bias (the tendency to selectively accept information that supports pre-existing beliefs or opinions) and spreads misinformation.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.