As TikTok faces a ban in the United States, a new study has shed light on what types of accounts American adults follow on the platform. According to the report published by Pew Research, political content and news make up only a small portion of the accounts followed by American adults on the app.
The report is based on an analysis of 227,946 accounts followed by the 664,000 TikTok users who participated in the study. Less than one percent of those accounts were “politicians, civic actors, or traditional media outlets and journalists,” Pew found, noting that “the typical U.S. adult on TikTok does not follow any accounts in each of these categories.”
Instead, people were more likely to follow accounts that posted about entertainment and pop culture, humor, and viral dance clips. “To the extent that accounts followed by Americans discuss politics, it is mixed with other topics,” Pew writes. “About 43% of all followed accounts that discussed politics or current events during the study period also discussed entertainment and pop culture.”
The content in users’ following feeds doesn’t offer a full picture of what people see on TikTok. The app is set by default to an algorithmic “For You” feed, which is primarily made up of recommendations. And even though most users don’t choose to follow explicitly political accounts, previous research from Pew found that 45 percent of US TikTok users report seeing “at least some” content about politics or political issues on the app.
The question of what US users see on TikTok has come under close scrutiny over the past year. Some lawmakers sought to ban the app last year after TikTok critics used hashtag data to suggest the app was disproportionately recommending pro-Palestinian content. The company said such views were the result of “unapproved analysis.” TikTok stopped showing view counts for specific hashtags earlier this year.
While Pew’s report doesn’t touch on TikTok’s algorithmic recommendations, the authors note that followings are an important signal for the app. “Users’ interactions with posts from the accounts they follow play a key role in shaping their For You page,” the report states. “And studying these followed accounts can give us a better understanding of the kind of content users actively choose to see on the platform.”