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 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.
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.