Pew Research Center senior researchers Colleen McClain and Kirsten Eddy have taken a deep dive into the relationship Americans have with TikTok, now that the company with alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party agreed to sell its domestic operations to a new venture fueled by investors with no ties to Beijing.
What did they find?
- About four-in-ten U.S. adults (37%) say they use TikTok, up from 21% in 2021. It’s one of a few platforms Pew studies that have seen sustained growth over this period.
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Majorities of young adults and teens use TikTok. About six-in-ten adults under 30 (63%) say they’re on the platform, compared with smaller shares of older adults:
- 44% of those ages 30 to 49
- 30% of those 50 to 64
- 12% of those 65 and older
In addition, 68% of teens ages 13 to 17 report using the platform. That share has stayed relatively stable in recent years and makes TikTok one of teens’ top-used platforms, among those Pew studies.
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Roughly one-in-five U.S. teens report being on TikTok “almost constantly.” The Pew researchers discovered that Black and Hispanic teens are more likely than White teens to be almost-constant TikTok users. That survey did not have enough Asian teens in the sample to be broken out into a separate analysis.
Teen girls are also slightly more likely than teen boys to report this kind of use.
- Entertainment is the main draw for adults on TikTok. In a 2024 Center study from the Pew-Knight Initiative, 95% of adult users said this was a reason they use the platform, including 81% who called it a major reason. By comparison, 65% of adult users said they use TikTok to connect with people who share their interests, 62% use it to look at product reviews or recommendations, and 53% use it to keep up with sports or pop culture.
- Just over half of U.S. adults who use TikTok (55%) say they regularly get news there. That works out to 20% of all U.S. adults, up dramatically from 3% in 2020.
- Many adult TikTok users see breaking news content there, but it’s less common than other types of news. Users were more likely to say they see funny posts (84%) and people’s opinions (80%) related to current events rather than news articles (57%) or breaking news (55%), according to a 2024 Center study from the Pew-Knight Initiative.
- Americans’ support for a TikTok ban dropped from 50% in spring 2023 to 34% in 2025. The share who saw TikTok as a national security threat also dipped in that period.
- A quarter of TikTok’s users produce most of its content. Our 2023 study of TikTok content posted by U.S. adults found that 98% of publicly accessible videos came from the most active 25% of users. Overall, 52% of U.S. adult TikTok users have ever posted a video there.
The data from Pew is an update to information originally shared on April 3, 2024.
