TikTok remains a major news source in 2026, but its rapid U.S. growth has paused. Pew Research Center found that 20% of American adults regularly get news on TikTok—the same share as in 2025—while use among adults ages 18 to 29 fell from 43% to 39%. The platform is still far more important for news than it was in 2020, when the overall figure was just 3%.
Featured image: Archival photo of the TikTok logo on a smartphone, published November 5, 2025. Photo by Zulfugar Karimov via Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License. The image predates the August 2026 survey and is illustrative.
How many Americans get news from TikTok in 2026?
Pew’s survey found that one in five U.S. adults regularly gets news from TikTok. That national figure was unchanged from 2025, after rising steadily from 3% in 2020 to 20% five years later.
| Age group | Regularly gets news on TikTok | 2025 result |
|---|---|---|
| All U.S. adults | 20% | 20% |
| 18–29 | 39% | 43% |
| 30–49 | 25% | 25% |
| 50–64 | 11% | 10% |
| 65+ | 4% | 3% |
The four-point decline among 18-to-29-year-olds was offset by small increases in older age groups. That is why the national total held steady even though the youngest adults became slightly less likely to report regular TikTok news use.
Why 20% and 53% are both correct
Two percentages in the study answer different questions. The 20% figure covers all U.S. adults. Pew separately found that 53% of American adults who use TikTok regularly get news there. The second number uses TikTok users—not the entire adult population—as its denominator.
This distinction is easy to miss in headlines. Pew estimates that 37% of U.S. adults use TikTok at all. Among that smaller group, news consumption is common: roughly half say they regularly encounter or seek news on the platform.
Has TikTok stopped growing as a news source?
The latest survey supports a narrow conclusion: reported regular news use did not grow nationally between 2025 and 2026. It does not prove that TikTok’s broader influence, total news viewing time or individual news creators’ audiences have stopped growing. Pew asked whether respondents regularly get news on the platform; it did not measure minutes watched, video views or the accuracy of the news received.
Tubefilter described the result as a possible plateau. That is a reasonable interpretation of the unchanged national share, but one year of flat survey results is not enough to establish a permanent ceiling. The same data show a dramatic longer-term change: TikTok’s overall news figure rose from 3% in 2020 to 20% in 2025 before holding there in 2026.
Who is most likely to get news on TikTok?
Age remains the strongest visible divide. The 39% result among adults under 30 was more than three times the 11% recorded for ages 50 to 64 and nearly ten times the 4% result among people 65 and older.
Pew also reported differences by race and political identification. About 35% of Hispanic adults and 32% of Black adults said they regularly get news on TikTok, compared with 14% of White adults and 14% of Asian adults. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents registered 22%, versus 15% among Republicans and Republican leaners.
How TikTok compares with other platforms
Among each platform’s own users, 53% of TikTok users said they regularly get news there. That was close to Facebook and X, both at 57%, and above Instagram at 46% and YouTube at 41%. Nextdoor showed the largest year-over-year change in Pew’s platform-user comparison, rising from 33% in 2025 to 45% in 2026.
The measures should not be read as audience-size rankings because the platforms have different user bases. YouTube, for example, reaches a much larger share of U.S. adults overall. A separate survey covered in The Daily Vantage found that YouTube had edged television as a political-news source, but that study used a different question and methodology, so its percentages are not directly interchangeable with Pew’s TikTok results.
What the survey can—and cannot—tell us
Pew surveyed 5,166 U.S. adults from August 24 through August 30, 2026. Participants belonged to the American Trends Panel, and the results were weighted to represent the U.S. adult population.
- The survey measures self-reported regular news use, not verified viewing histories.
- It covers adults in the United States, not teenagers or international TikTok audiences.
- It does not judge whether content is produced by a newsroom, an independent creator, a politician or an ordinary user.
- It does not measure trust, accuracy, misinformation exposure or how often people intentionally search for news.
Bottom line
TikTok news use in 2026 is best described as large but no longer rapidly expanding in Pew’s national measure. One in five American adults regularly gets news there, and a majority of adult TikTok users do so. The decline among adults under 30 deserves attention, but it does not erase the platform’s rise from a marginal news source in 2020 to a central part of many users’ media habits today.
Sources
- Pew Research Center: 1 in 5 Americans Regularly Get News on TikTok, October 19, 2026.
- Pew Research Center survey methodology, August 24–30, 2026.
- Tubefilter: TikTok’s popularity as a news source appears to be reaching a plateau, October 20, 2026.
