About half of Hispanic adults are using TikTok, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey that also found the social media platform to be the only one to see significant growth since 2021.
Researchers conducted a survey from May 19 to Sept. 5, 2023, asking nearly 6,000 U.S. adults about how they use the following social media platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Snapchat, X, Reddit and BeReal.
YouTube was found to be the most popular platform among all U.S. adults, with more than 8 in 10 (83%) reporting they use platform, followed by Facebook (68%) and Instagram (47%), according to the survey published Wednesday.
The three platforms were also found to be the most popular among Hispanics: YouTube (86%), Facebook (66%) and Instagram (58%). However, the popularity of Instagram among Latinos is 11 percentage points higher compared to the general population, according to the survey.
Hispanic social media users are also particularly more likely than the general population to use TikTok and WhatsApp, according to the survey.
Forty-nine percent of Hispanic adults surveyed reported using TikTok, showing they use the platform at a much higher rate than Black adults (39%), Asian adults (29%) and White adults (28%), according to the survey.
“We do see that there is that permanent usage among Hispanic adults specifically, in which we see about half of Hispanic adults using TikTok,” Jeffrey Gottfried, the associate director of research at Pew who authored their most recent report on Americans’ social media use, told NBC News Friday.
TikTok’s popularity among Hispanics coincides with the platform’s user base growth. Thirty-three percent of all U.S. adults surveyed said they use TikTok, showing a 12 percentage points increase from 2021 (21%).
“That is something that stands out,” Gottfried said.
TikTok’s user base growth also stands out when compared to the other social media platforms researchers asked about. These sites “had more modest or no growth” in their user base over the past couple of years, according to the survey.
“When we look at the entire social media landscape, we do see a story of stability across the various sites,” Gottfried said. “What we do see here with that stability, is that there is no indication that any of them have decreased.”
Fifty-four percent of Hispanic adults as well as 51% of Asian adults surveyed reported using WhatsApp, compared to 31% of Black adults and 20% of white adults.
Social media platforms in general have been riddled with challenges over their roles in tackling online misinformation across different languages as well as concerns over data privacy and security threats.
In order to understand how these challenges impact the U.S. population and its subgroups, “you first have to get a sense of its salience within the public itself. That’s really our goal here,” Gottfried said about the main purpose behind his research.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
