With the rise of social media use and growing concerns about health misinformation that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increased attention to the role that various social media platforms play in the dissemination of health information, both accurate and inaccurate. Previous KFF polling has found that while few adults say they put a lot of trust in health information they come across on social media, those who use social media more frequently for health advice are more likely to believe false statements about issue like COVID-19 vaccines, reproductive health, and gun safety. This new KFF Health Misinformation Tracking Poll focuses on health and election-related information on the popular social media app TikTok in light of recent developments related to the platform.
In late April, President Joe Biden signed into a law a bill that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese-owned parent company does not sell the platform within a year. The bill passed both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support, with many lawmakers, including President Biden, largely citing national security risks. At the same time, some media reports have documented the spread of various different types of health misinformation on the app, including misinformation related to prescription birth control.
Key Findings
- Most adults who use TikTok report seeing health-related content on the app, with the largest shares saying they’ve seen content about mental health (66%) and weight loss (66%). Younger users are particularly likely to report being exposed to health information on TikTok, with large shares of users ages 18-29 reporting seeing advice or information about several different health topics on the app, including mental health (91%), weight loss (79%), while many other younger users report seeing advice or information about abortion (59%), and birth control (52%).
- While about four in ten TikTok users say they trust information about health issues they see on the app, just one in eight say they have ever talked to a doctor (13%) or sought mental health treatment (12%) at least in part because of something they saw on TikTok. Larger shares of younger users ages 18-29 say they trust health information on TikTok (53%), and younger users are also more likely than older users to say they followed up with a doctor (19%) or sought mental health treatment (26%) due to content they’ve seen on the app.
- Most TikTok users say the content they’ve seen on the app has not affected their confidence in science and scientists, birth control, or vaccines. Overall, about one in seven users say content on TikTok has made them “less confident” (15%) in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and a similar share (12%) say it has made them “more confident.” Among Republican TikTok users, however, a larger share say content on the app has made them “less confident” in vaccines (24%) rather than “more confident” (7%).
- When it comes to TikTok content centered on election issues, most users report either not seeing content related to these issues or seeing content that is a mix of different opinions on these topics. For the most part, TikTok users who identify as Democrats and Republicans report seeing a somewhat different mix of political content on the platform. On the issue of abortion, however, TikTok users across the political spectrum are much more likely to say the content they see on the app is mostly pro-choice or supportive or abortion rights rather than anti-abortion or supportive of abortion restrictions. Even among Republican TikTok users, the share who say they mostly see pro-choice content on the app is roughly three times the share who say they mostly see anti-abortion content (17% v. 5%).
TikTok Use and Exposure to Health Information
Just under half of adults say they use the social media app TikTok, including at least six in ten younger adults, Black adults, and Hispanic adults. About four in ten (44%) adults say they use TikTok, including larger shares of younger adults ages 18-29 (66%) and ages 30-49 (54%) and fewer adults ages 50 and older (27%). The app is more popular among people of color with about six in ten Hispanic adults (63%) and Black adults (62%) saying they use TikTok compared to about one-third of White adults (34%). Women are more likely than men to use say they use TikTok (47% v. 40%).
Similar shares – or at least four in ten – Democrats, independents and Republicans report using TikTok. About one in five adults (18%) report using the app every day, including nearly four in ten adults ages 18 to 29 (37%) and a similar share of Hispanic adults (36%).
Most TikTok users report seeing health-related content on the app, including a majority who say they’ve seen information or advice about mental health (66%) or weight loss (66%). About four in ten TikTok users say they’ve seen information or advice about vaccines (42%) on the platform, while about a third say the same about abortion (36%), prescription drugs (34%), and birth control (34%). Younger TikTok users are more likely than older users to say they’ve seen some of these topics on TikTok, with larger shares of users ages 18 to 29 saying they’ve seen information or advice about mental health (91%), weight loss (79%), abortion (59%), or birth control (52%). Women are more likely than men who use TikTok to say they have seen information or advice about mental health (71% v. 61%) or birth control (41% v. 25%) on the app. About half of women of reproductive age – or those ages 18 to 49 – report seeing information or advice on TikTok about prescription birth control on (54%) or abortion (48%). Democrats (35%) and independents (41%) who use TikTok are more likely than Republican users (23%) to report seeing information or advice about birth control on the app; however, similar shares across partisans report seeing information about most of these other subjects.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a relationship between frequency of TikTok use and the amount of health-related content people report seeing on the app. Adults who use TikTok “every day” are more likely than those who use the app monthly or less often to say they’ve seen information or advice about each of the health-related topics included in the survey. Notably, larger shares of younger adults and women report using the app every day compared to older adults and men, respectively, which may at least partially explain why these groups report seeing more health-related content on the app.
Trust and Conversations about Health Information on TikTok
Fewer than half of TikTok users say they trust information about health issues that they see on the app, but younger users, Black adults, and Hispanic adults report higher levels of trust. Overall, four in ten TikTok users say they trust information they see about health issues on TikTok at least “somewhat,” including 9% who say they trust such information a “great deal.” Most users say they trust health information on TikTok “not much” (36%) or “not at all” (23%).
TikTok users between the ages of 18-29 are more likely than older adults to say they trust health information on TikTok, with about half (53%) of these younger adults saying they trust information about health issues on the app at least somewhat – including one in six (17%) who say they trust health information on TikTok “a great deal” – compared to smaller shares of older TikTok users. Similar shares of women and men who use TikTok say they trust information about health issues that they see on the app.
Among those who report using TikTok every day (18% of all adults), six in ten (58%) say they trust information about health issues they see on the app at least “somewhat.” Adults who use the app less frequently are less likely than daily users to report trusting health information they see on TikTok. Notably, daily TikTok users are disproportionately made up of younger adults ages 18 to 29.
Few TikTok users overall and across demographics say they’ve talked to a doctor or sought mental health treatment because of something they saw on the app, but younger users and women are more likely than older users and men to report doing so. About one in eight adults who use TikTok say they have ever talked to a doctor or other health care provider at least in part because of something they saw on TikTok (13%) or decided to seek mental health treatment at least in part because of something they saw on the app (12%). Younger users are more likely than older adults to report either of these, with a quarter (26%) of TikTok users between the ages of 18 and 29 saying they decided to seek mental health treatment and one in five (19%) saying they talked to a doctor or health care provider because of something they saw on the app. Among TikTok users, women are about twice as likely as men to say they talked to a doctor or health care provider (17% v. 7%) or decided to seek mental health treatment due to something they saw on the app (15% v. 8%). The share who report talking to a doctor or seeking mental health treatment at least partly because of something they saw on TikTok rises to about one in five among those who use TikTok every day (20% and 18%, respectively). Nonetheless, most of these daily users say they have not followed up with a doctor or sought mental mental health treatment due to content they’ve seen on the app.
While most TikTok users say content they’ve seen on the app has not affected their confidence in science and scientists, prescription birth control, or the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, users are more likely to say content on the app has made them more confident in science and scientists rather than less confident. At least seven in ten TikTok users say information they’ve seen on the app has not affected their confidence in the safety of prescription birth control (76%), the safety and effectiveness of vaccines (73%), or science and scientists (70%).
When it comes to trust in science and scientists, TikTok users are nearly three times as likely to say content they’ve seen on the app has made them more confident in science and scientists rather than less confident (22% vs. 8%). By contrast, when it comes to confidence in prescription birth control and the safety and effectiveness of vaccines similar shares of TikTok users say content they’ve seen on the app has made them more confident as less confident (12% each for birth control, 12% and 15% for vaccines). Similar shares of women and men – including women of reproductive age under the age of 50 — who use TikTok say content on the app has made them either more or less confident in prescription birth control, with about three in four saying it has not made a difference.
Most TikTok users across demographics say content on the app has not affected their confidence in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, however Republicans are more likely to say TikTok content has made them less confident in vaccines rather than more confident. Overall, about one in seven users say content on TikTok has made them “less confident” (15%) in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and a similar share (12%) say it has made them “more confident.” For most groups across age, partisanship, race and ethnicity, the shares saying TikTok content increased their confidence in vaccines is similar to the share who say it decreased their confidence.
However, one group breaks with this pattern: Republican TikTok users are about three times as likely to say content on the app has made them “less confident” in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines rather than “more confident” (24% v. 7%).
Vaccine misinformation may affect parents’ confidence in vaccinating their young children, and recent KFF polling has shown that about a quarter of parents report believing false information about measles vaccines. Just under one in five (17%) parents who use TikTok say content they’ve seen on the app has made them “less confident” in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines while a similar share of parents say it has made them “more confident” (11%). However, most parents who use TikTok say the content they’ve seen on the app hasn’t affected their confidence in the safety and effectiveness of vaccines.
Election Issues on TikTok
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, TikTok users may be exposed to election-related topics and one-sided political discourse, particularly as growing shares of U.S. adults report regularly getting their news from the app. However, like other social media platforms, the content users see on their TikTok feeds may vary from person-to-person, as it is curated by the app’s proprietary algorithm.
When it comes to TikTok content centered on some key election issues, including the presidential candidates, abortion, guns, and immigration, most users report either not seeing content related to these issues or seeing content that is a mix of different opinions on these topics. For the most part, TikTok users who identify as Democrats and Republicans report seeing a somewhat different mix of political content, particularly when it comes to presidential candidates, but these patterns are not universal across the topics included in the survey.
It’s important to note that this survey measures self-report views of TikTok content, which may not necessarily match up with other studies that look at actual content in users’ video feeds.
Overall, few TikTok users report mostly seeing one-sided content related to the presidential candidates, but slightly larger shares say the content they see on the app is mostly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Joe Biden rather than mostly pro-Biden or anti-Trump, with even larger tilts toward pro-Trump or anti-Biden content among Republican users and young adults. The shares of TikTok users who say the content they see on the app is mostly Pro-Donald Trump or anti-Joe Biden (14%) is slightly higher than the share who say the content they see is mostly pro-Joe Biden or anti-Donald Trump (10%), with one in three (34%) saying the content they see is a mix of both viewpoints, and four in ten saying they don’t see content related to either Trump or Biden on TikTok.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Republican TikTok users are about three times as likely to say the content they see is mostly pro-Trump/anti-Biden rather than pro-Biden/anti-Trump (29% v. 10%), while Democrats are about twice as likely to say the content they see mostly favors Biden rather than Trump (16% vs. 7%).
Notably, TikTok users ages 18 to 29 and Hispanic TikTok users are about twice as likely to say most of the content they see is pro-Trump or anti-Biden rather than pro-Biden or anti-Trump (21% vs. 11% for young users and 18% vs. 8% for Hispanic adults).
Across partisanship and other demographics, the share of TikTok users who say the content they see on the app is mostly pro-choice or supportive of abortion rights (24%) is far larger than the share who say the content they see is mostly anti-abortion or supportive of abortion restrictions (4%). The share of TikTok users who say they mostly see pro-choice content rises to four in ten (42%) among those ages 18 to 29 – larger than the shares who say the same among those ages 30 to 49 (22%) and 50 and older (8%). These younger users are also more likely than older adults to report seeing any abortion-related content on TikTok.
Few users across partisan groups (including just 5% of Republicans) report seeing mostly anti-abortion content on TikTok, though Democrats who use TikTok are more likely than Republican users to say the content they see is mostly pro-choice of supportive of abortion rights (32% v. 17%).
Overall, men and women who use TikTok are each much more likely to report seeing mostly pro-choice content than to say they see mostly anti-abortion content. While about three in four (27%) women who use TikTok say the content they see is mostly pro-choice, this rises to about one-third (34%) among women ages 18 to 49.
Despite these differences, most users – including at least half across partisanship, age, and gender – say the content they see related to abortion on TikTok is either a mix of both pro and anti-abortion viewpoints (22%) or they don’t see this content related to abortion at all (50%).
Most TikTok users who report seeing gun-related content on the app say they see a mix of viewpoints, but Democrats and younger users are more likely to report seeing mostly anti-gun content. One quarter of TikTok users say they see a mix of gun-related viewpoints on the app, while about one in ten each say they mostly see pro-gun content (8%) or anti-gun content (10%) and over half (57%) report not seeing gun-related content on TikTok.
Democrats who use TikTok are about twice as likely to say they mostly see anti-gun content as opposed to pro-gun content on the app (16% v. 7%). Younger TikTok users ages 18 to 29 are about twice as likely to say they mostly see anti-gun content than pro-gun content (18% v. 9%), while other age groups report seeing either viewpoint in similar shares.
Among all TikTok users, and across these demographic groups, most users say the content they see is either a mix of both pro and anti-gun or say they do not see gun-related content on the app.
TikTok users report seeing a mix of immigration-related content on the app, with no clear differences by partisanship. For immigration-related content, somewhat larger shares of TikTok users say the content they see is mostly pro-immigration (15%) compared to those who say they mostly see anti-immigration content (10%). Most users, however, say the content they see is either a mix of both pro and anti-immigration viewpoints (27%) or they don’t see this content on TikTok (47%). Despite often bitter partisan debates over the country’s approach to immigration policy (an issue that has ranked high among voters’ top issues ahead the 2024 election) among Democrats, independents and Republicans who use TikTok, similar shares say the content they see on the app is either mostly pro-immigration or anti-immigration, with at least one in five across these groups saying they see a mix of viewpoints.
Younger TikTok users ages 18 to 29 are about twice as likely to say the content they see on the app is mostly pro-immigration rather than anti-immigration (25% v. 13%), but among older age groups, similar shares report seeing either mostly pro-immigration content or mostly anti- immigration content.