TikTok has dethroned YouTube and Instagram and become the top social app for news among young people

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Business Insider

Dec 29, 2025, 5:08 AM ET


TikTok has unseated its social media rivals as the top spot for young people to get their news.

TikTok is now the most popular social app for news among 18- to 29-year-olds in the US, according to new survey data from the Pew Research Center. The app surpassed YouTube and Instagram, which were the top choices in 2024.

Forty-three percent of young adults said they regularly get news from TikTok in 2025, compared to 41% for both YouTube and Facebook. Forty percent named Instagram as a regular news source, while 21% said X (formerly Twitter) and 18% said Reddit.

Social media beat out every other format as a place where 18- to 29-year-olds said they get news, according to Pew's survey. Seventy-six percent of the cohort said they often or sometimes get news from social media, compared to 60% for news websites and 28% for email newsletters.

Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-now-top-social-app-for-news-among-young-people-2025-12

[Mike Nelson]

1. I don't Tic Tok...

... but I looked at someone else's Tic Tok. It was like "America's Funniest Home Videos" updated for today.

[wolfie001]

6. TT helped Biden in 2020 and then the billionaire tRUMPers got involved

And totally f6cked it up. The "Watermelon people" decided to either sit on their hands or vote for tRUMP and TT was one of the main motivators for those idiots.

[QueerDuck]

2. The top app for NEWS?? Heaven help us all.

The idiotic 5-minute-crafts, and impossible AI recipe channel is now their news channel?? That explains a lot and it's very disappointing.

[BComplex]

3. I wish there was a platform that was owned by a billionaire democrat that

people could go to to get their news for real.

Or a democratic-leaning programmer smart enough to create a social media platform that could become popular enough to rival all those others owned by the bad guys.

I so totally don't get it.

[wolfie001]

5. Bluesky nt

[Behind the Aegis]

9. Exactly.

The dumbing down of American continues unabated. That is a Chinese government owned/created app makes me wonder if it is not intentional or just dumb luck. It is one thing to get news there, but quite another to accept it out of the gate, especially when some "journalists" are nothing more than influencers and don't know shit about the subjects they are peddling.

[wolfie001]

4. RW mods are militantly incentivized against LW posters

That was apparent 2-3 years ago and I'm sure it's much worse now with the billionaire kleptocracy in full, unbridled power. Thanks to the fat orange imbecile.

[LuvLoogie]

7. One of the reasons that TikTok for news has become popular

Is the ability to share the information and participate in action in real time. The community driven countermeasures to the ICE raids is an example that is empowered by the live feeds and shared posts.

There are real journalists on social media,on TikTok. And many TikTokers dive deep into particular issues. There are doctors, lawyers, artists, gardeners, craftsmen, engineers.

People who dismiss the platform, don't use it. They have this caricature of the users based on their ignorance of the platform.

I mean DU should be on TikTok more. Seriously.

[LudwigPastorius]

8. Great.

A whole generation is now only partially tethered to reality, and will make their voting decisions based on "influencers" spin on the news and AI generated slop.

If we think things are bad now, just wait.

(Yes, I am an old man yelling at clouds.)