According to Ofcom research, TikTok is the most popular news source among teenagers | British News

According to a study by Ofcom, TikTok is now the most popular singles news source for teenagers in the UK.

The media regulator found that 28% of 12-15 year olds use the video-sharing app to catch up on current events, a higher proportion than any other platform.

youtube And Instagram come second, with both being used for this purpose by 25% of people in this age group, according to the regulator’s report News Consumption In The UK 2022/23.

This comes at a time when the Internet is increasingly replacing traditional print media as a source of news for the general public.

Around 68% of UK adults now use online sources for news, compared to just 26% for physical newspapers Ofcom research found.

However, television remains the most popular platform: 70% of adults tune in to catch up on current affairs – and that number rises to 75% when on-demand content is factored in.

So said Nic Newman, senior research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism tick tock was often used as a platform for lighter issues rather than “serious” news, events like that Covid pandemic had changed perception.

He said: “COVID was a big shift because people were at home and talking about COVID on TikTok and people had a little bit of free time.”

“This is a case of very serious news being shared on TikTok.

“Passions and celebrity news, that’s a big part of what’s going on with younger people, but there’s serious news too, that’s the bigger change.”

This comes after a separate study recently also found that TiKTok is It is becoming increasingly popular as a source of news among young people around the world.

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Across all age groups, Facebook continues to be the most widely used social media platform for accessing news. But it is showing signs of declining, having reached just 30% of adults last year – down from 35% in 2019, Ofcom said.

In contrast, TikTok has seen a “significant” rise in popularity as a news source, and is now used by 10% of adults for this purpose – up from just 1% in 2020.

Despite the rise of TikTok, 45% of 12-15 year olds said they weren’t interested in the news – almost half said they found it “too boring”. Another 16% said they found it “too worrying.”

The app has also faced increasing criticism and concerns from Western governments over the past few years over its alleged ties to the Chinese government, leading to the creation of the platform banned on government devices in Australia, Canada, the EU and the UK.

TikTok’s owner, Chinese internet company ByteDance, has denied sharing data with officials in Beijing.

In April, the company was fined £12.7million for breaching data protection laws, including using personal information from children under the age of 13 without parental consent.

The Office of the Information Commissioner It is estimated that around 1.4 million under-13s in the UK routinely use TikTok – despite the rules stating that you must be at least 13 to create an account.

Ofcom’s research, which included interviews with more than 1,000 young people, also found that 23% of 12-15 year olds were most interested in news related to ‘sports or sports personalities’.

Another 15% said they would like to know more about “music news or singers”, while 11% said they would like to be kept up to date about “celebs or famous people”.

According to the report, social media platforms are also among the top news channels for young people aged 16-24.

Instagram is the most popular single news source, with 44% of the age group using it for this purpose, while 29% said they use TikTok to get the latest on current events.

Just one in ten say they don’t read any news at all, compared to 5% of UK adults as a whole.