Half of Americans support banning TikTok

Chinese-owned TikTok has 150 million monthly active users in the US but despite this, 50% in a survey say they support the US government banning the app. No more than 22% say they would oppose a banning of the app, the survey from Pew Research Center shows. A sizeable share (28%) say they are not sure.

The US government says it wants the Chinese-owned video sharing app to sell its US operations or risk being banned. The background is fear that the Chinese-owned company could pass on TikTok user data to Chinese authorities. Governments and the EU Commission have instructed staffers to not have the app on their business phones.

Older Americans are much more supportive of banning the platform than younger ones: 71% of those ages 65 and older support it, compared with 54% of those ages 50 to 64 and fewer than half of adults under 50.

Those under 30 stand out for being the only age group in which more people oppose banning the platform than support it (46% vs. 29%).

A 2021 Pew Research survey showed 48% of US adults ages 18 to 29 said they used TikTok, compared with 21% among adults overall.

“Users of the platform are less supportive of banning it than non-users, according to the new survey. Still, about one-in-five adult TikTok users (19%) say they support a US government ban of the app; 60% of non-users say the same. However, even among non-users, older people are more supportive of a ban”, the Pew report says.

Low shares of Republicans and Democrats who use TikTok support a ban (21% and 18%, respectively). But among non-users, Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to support a ban (70% vs. 54%).

Views of China are also related to support for banning TikTok. Adults who have an unfavourable view of China are much more likely to support a TikTok ban than those who see the country positively (54% vs. 27%). Those who have a very unfavourable view of China are particularly likely to support a ban, compared with those with a somewhat unfavourable view of the country (66% vs. 40%).

“Some of this reflects general scepticism about how social media companies operate, rather than sentiments toward China specifically. Large shares of Americans also have little or no confidence in American social media companies to follow privacy policies (75%) or to use their personal information in ways they feel comfortable with (78%). However, only around a third of US adults say they have no confidence at all in American companies, in contrast with the majorities who say the same about Chinese companies.”

Most social media companies have copied the TikTok short video concept and a ban would free up market shares. It has been estimated that especially Meta, Google and Snap would benefit from TikTok disappearing from the US market.

TikTok is available in over 150 countries, has over 1 billion users, and says it has 150 million monthly active users in the US, which is up from 100 million in August 2020.

Pew research has earlier found that a small but growing number of US adults are getting their news regularly  on TikTok, even as news consumption on other social media platforms stagnates or declines.

“In just two years, the share of US adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has roughly tripled, from 3% in 2020 to 10% in 2022”, the Pew research report says.

“The video-sharing platform has reported high earnings the past year and has become especially popular among teens – two-thirds of whom report using it in some way – as well as young adults.”

“Adults under 30 are the most likely group to say they regularly get news on TikTok. About a quarter of Americans in this age group (26%) say they regularly get news there, higher than in 2021 and 2020. This compares with 10% of those ages 30 to 49, 4% of those 50 to 64 and just 1% of those 65 and older.”