20% of 18-to-24-year-olds use TikTok as a news source

Have you heard the news? TikTok is changing the way we consume media.

That’s one of the takeaways from the Reuters Institute‘s Digital News Report. In the latest edition of the annual survey, 20% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 said they use TikTok as a news source. That’s good for a 5% year-over-year bump, according to Reuters.

TikTok is the fastest-growing social network for news consumption, but many people have chosen to ignore the news altogether. Of the 94,000 people queried for the Reuters survey, fewer than half expressed much interest in the news. That percentage is down 15% since 2018.

For many of the people who choose to stay up on current events, platforms like TikTok and Twitter are preferred sources. 30% of surveyed consumers said they visit social media networks before news sites when searching for headlines. No other medium of news consumption claimed a bigger slice of that pie.

One factor driving the growth of social media news operations is an increasing appetite for multimedia reporting — especially among Gen Z. Among all age groups featured in the 2023 Digital News Report, 18-to-24-year-olds expressed the least interest in reading the news. They also emerged as the cohort most likely to watch or listen to the day’s top stories.

“There are no reasonable grounds for expecting that those born in the 2000s will suddenly come to prefer old-fashioned websites, let alone broadcast and print, simply because they grow older,” said Reuters Institute Director Rasmus Nielsen.

Savvy outlets like The Washington Post have been able to capitalize on the rise of TikTok news content. But according to the Reuters report, most of the people who get news on social media “pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.”

That trend sparks some concerns, especially since the same report also found that only 32% of Americans trust the news, and 56% of all respondents worry about their ability to identify fake news. TikTok has also admitted that it can “heat” specific topics to bring them to the For You Page, but the platform is now trying to position itself as a trusted protector of sensitive data.

Despite the flaws of social media news, sources like TikTok are clearly gaining favor. The only thing the traditional news providers can do is join the action.