News on TikTok: Pew Finds 1 in 5 U.S. Adults Regularly Get It (2026)

One in five U.S. adults regularly gets news on TikTok, according to a Pew Research Center survey published October 19, 2026. Pew’s short read, titled “1 in 5 Americans Regularly Get News on TikTok,” says: “TikTok is primarily known for short-form video sharing, but it has also become a common place for many people to get news.”

This guide sets out the numbers Pew published on news on TikTok, who they describe, how the survey was done and what Pew’s pages do not say. Every figure below is Pew’s, from the short read, Pew’s Social Media and News Fact Sheet and, where labeled, Pew’s June 2024 report. This site adds no analysis.

What to know:

• The share: 20% of U.S. adults regularly get news on TikTok, per Pew’s August 2026 survey. Pew says that is unchanged from 2025 and up from 3% in 2020.
• Among TikTok users: 53% say they regularly get news there, per Pew, against 55% in 2025 and 22% in 2020.
• Age: 39% of adults ages 18 to 29 regularly get news on TikTok, per Pew, against 4% of those 65 and older.
• The survey: 5,166 U.S. adults, August 24 to 30, 2026.

The Headline Number on News on TikTok

Pew reports that “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.” Pew says it has updated this analysis annually for the last few years to track the emergence of TikTok as a news source among Americans.

Pew also reports how many Americans use TikTok at all: 37%. That trails YouTube (84%), Facebook (70%) and Instagram (51%), per Pew, but is more than the shares who use WhatsApp (33%), LinkedIn (31%), Reddit (25%) or X (18%).

How News on TikTok Compares With Other Platforms

Pew’s fact sheet reports the share of all U.S. adults who regularly get news on each of 12 sites. According to Pew, “Facebook and YouTube continue to outpace all other social media sites when it comes to news consumption,” and “smaller shares of Americans regularly get news on Instagram (23%) and TikTok (20%).”

• Facebook: 40%
• YouTube: 34%
• Instagram: 23%
• TikTok: 20%
• X: 10%
• Reddit: 9%
• Nextdoor: 8%
• LinkedIn: 6%
• WhatsApp: 5%
• Rumble: 2%
• Truth Social: 2%
• Bluesky: 1%

Among TikTok Users: Who Gets News on TikTok

Pew also looks at each site’s own users. Among U.S. adults who use TikTok, 53% say they regularly get news on the platform, per Pew. That is about the same as the share who said so in 2025 (55%) and well above the 22% who did in 2020.

Pew says the share of TikTok users who get news there is similar to the shares among Facebook users (57%) and X users (57%), and higher than the shares among users of other social media platforms. Its fact sheet puts Instagram at 46% of users, and notes that nearly half of Nextdoor users (45%) report regularly getting news there, up from 33% in 2025.

Pew’s note on the question: only respondents who indicated that they use TikTok were asked whether they regularly get news there, and the other answer option was “No, I don’t regularly get news on this.”

Who Regularly Gets News on TikTok

By age

Pew says younger adults are far more likely than older adults to regularly get news on TikTok. Among Americans ages 18 to 29, around four in ten (39%) do, compared with 25% of those ages 30 to 49, 11% of those ages 50 to 64 and 4% of those ages 65 and older.

By race and ethnicity

Pew reports that 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.

By party

Pew reports partisan differences: Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (22%) are slightly more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners (15%) to regularly get news on TikTok.

By gender and education

Pew’s fact sheet says women are more likely to regularly get news from Facebook and TikTok, while men are more likely to get news from YouTube and X. It also says adults without a college degree are more likely than college graduates to get news from Facebook and TikTok. The pages read for this guide give the direction of these differences, not the percentages for TikTok.

How Pew Surveyed News on TikTok

Pew says it surveyed 5,166 U.S. adults from August 24 to 30, 2026. Everyone who took part is a member of Pew’s survey panel, and the survey is designed to represent the views of all U.S. adults, per Pew. The short read links Pew’s methodology, questionnaire and topline files for the survey.

Pew’s short read is an update of a post first published in November 2023. The author, per the page, is a director of news and information research at Pew.

What Pew Found in 2024 About News on TikTok

Pew’s short read links an earlier report, How Americans Get News on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram, published June 12, 2024. It is based on a different survey, of 10,287 adult internet users in the United States from March 18 to 24, 2024, and it looks at how users experience news on four platforms. These are the 2024 findings Pew reported about TikTok.

• Share in 2024: 14% of U.S. adults said they regularly got news on TikTok, and 40% of TikTok users did, per that report.
• Why people use it: fewer than half of TikTok users said getting news was a major or minor reason they use the site, and 15% said it was a major reason.
• What users see: 90% of TikTok users said they ever see at least one of four types of news content Pew asked about. 55% said they see information about breaking news in real time, and 57% said they see news articles.
• Where TikTok news consumers say news comes from: 68% said they ever get news from influencers or celebrities, 84% from other people they do not know personally, 67% from news outlets or journalists and 48% from friends, family and acquaintances.
• Uniqueness: 35% of TikTok news consumers said the news they get there is news they would not get elsewhere.
• Feeling worn out: 11% of TikTok news consumers said they often feel worn out by the news they see on TikTok, and 36% said they sometimes do.

Pew’s 2024 report states that more news consumers get news from influencers or other people they do not know personally on TikTok than on the other three platforms. The 2024 and 2026 surveys used different samples, which is why the 2024 figures are listed separately here.

What Pew’s Pages Do Not Say

• What kind of news: the short read does not break down which topics or accounts people follow for news on TikTok.
• TikTok’s reaction: the pages read for this guide include no statement from TikTok.
• Trust and accuracy: Pew links separate work on trust and accuracy, listed in the sources below, which this guide did not summarize.
• Percentages for gender and education: the fact sheet text gives the direction of those differences, not TikTok-specific figures.

For other TikTok coverage on this site, see the TikTok Weekly Digest for Oct 12-18, the report on Missouri’s investigation into TikTok and the Meta ban on TikTok ads.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Americans get news on TikTok?

Pew reports that 20% of U.S. adults regularly get news on TikTok, in a survey of 5,166 adults conducted August 24 to 30, 2026.

Has the share of people who get news on TikTok changed?

Pew says the 2026 share is unchanged from 2025 and up from 3% in 2020.

Which age group gets the most news on TikTok?

Adults ages 18 to 29: 39% regularly get news there, per Pew, against 25% of ages 30 to 49, 11% of ages 50 to 64 and 4% of ages 65 and older.

What share of TikTok users get news there?

Pew says 53% of U.S. adult TikTok users regularly get news on the platform, similar to the 55% who said so in 2025 and up from 22% in 2020.

Sources: Pew Research Center, 1 in 5 Americans Regularly Get News on TikTok, Oct 19, 2026; Pew Research Center, Social Media and News Fact Sheet, Oct 19, 2026; Pew Research Center, How Americans Get News on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram, June 12, 2024.