As President Donald Trump quipped that he wants to make TikTok “100 percent MAGA,” a new survey revealed that one in five Americans says they regularly get their news from the social media app.
Twenty percent of U.S. adults regularly get news from TikTok, a figure that’s up from 3 percent in 2020, according to an analysis published Thursday by the Pew Research Center. It’s especially popular among younger people, with 43 percent of adults under 30 saying they regularly get news on TikTok, the survey revealed.
The trend is less popular among older adults, with the survey revealing ten percent of adults ages 50-65 regularly get their news on the app, along with 3 percent of adults over 65 years old. The pollsters also surveyed adult TikTok users specifically, 55 percent of whom say they regularly get news on the platform, which is up 22 percent from 2020.
TikTok is now on par with other social media sites — like X, Facebook and Trump’s Truth Social — in terms of the share of its adult users who regularly get news on the platform, according to the Pew Research Center.
The survey was published the same day Trump joked that he would want to make TikTok’s algorithm “100 percent MAGA” if he could. Trump made the remark as he signed an executive order facilitating a deal to transfer the majority ownership of TikTok to Americans, which will allow the app to remain available in the U.S.
“I always like MAGA-related. If I could, I’d make it 100 percent MAGA related,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Thursday. “But it’s not going to work out that way, unfortunately. No, everyone’s going to be treated fairly.”
The deal comes after then-President Joe Biden signed legislation last year requiring TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell TikTok’s assets to a U.S. company by early 2025 or face a nationwide ban. Trump then extended the deadline multiple times.
Under the deal, ByteDance will retain a stake of less than 20 percent, while “certain investors” will hold the remaining amount. It’s unclear who all of the parties in the deal are, but Trump has said that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, media baron Rupert Murdoch and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell are all involved.
“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” Trump said. “I have great respect for President Xi, and I very much appreciate that he approved the deal, because to get it done properly, we really needed the support of China and the approval of China.”
