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TikTok may have overcome its reputation as a dance app, but that doesn’t mean its users don’t still want to be entertained.
Adult TikTok users in the US primarily follow pop culture and entertainment accounts on the platform, according to a study from Pew Research Center released Tuesday. Creators and influencers who built their following on social media, as well as celebrities, make up half of all TikTok accounts followed by that demographic.
In good news for micro creators, accounts with less than 5,000 followers make up more than a third of the TikTok accounts followed by adults in the US “Mega influencers” with 1+ million followers, on the other hand, make up around 22%.
News you can lose? While some news accounts have built large TikTok followings, including the Washington Post, NPR’s Planet Money, and Under the Desk News, Pew found that politicians, civic actors, traditional media outlets, and journalists make up less than half of a percentage of followed accounts.
According to the report, a “typical US adult on TikTok follows no accounts in each of these categories.”
That doesn’t mean that TikTok users aren’t being exposed to news or political content on their FYPs, though. Last month, Pew reported that nearly 40% of US adults between 18 and 29 regularly get their news on TikTok. Political figures are also active on the platform: Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign, for example, has been notably active on TikTok and has amassed more than 4.6 million followers.
Still, a 2022 Pew analysis of X (then known as Twitter) found the accounts followed by the largest share of US adults on Twitter skewed more heavily toward media outlets, journalists, governmental or political figures, and policy or advocacy groups than what it found on TikTok today.
As X continues to lose users in the US and abroad and TikTok’s future remains in limbo, the future of news and politics within the social media landscape is anyone’s guess.