This study seeks to better understand the accounts that U.S. adults choose to follow on TikTok. The TikTok user experience happens largely within the site’s

Americans on TikTok also follow a large number of accounts that do not fit cleanly in any of these categories. These are largely personal accounts that have relatively few followers and post infrequently, if ever. Some 38% of all accounts followed by U.S. adults on the site fit this description.

In many ways, these findings mirror how TikTok users describe their own motivations for using the platform when surveyed. A Center survey of adult internet users conducted earlier this year found that nearly half of TikTok users report that they

To the extent Americans’ followed accounts discuss politics, it tends to be mixed with other topics. Some 43% of all followed accounts that discussed politics or current events during the study period also discussed entertainment and pop culture. And just over a third also posted humorous content.

There is also a fair amount of blending of politics and commerce: 16% of followed accounts that discussed politics or current events also posted promotional or sponsored content.

In total, some three-quarters of all the accounts that mentioned politics or current events during the study period also mentioned at least one of the other topics we categorized in our analysis.

Discussion of news, politics is less prevalent among the platform’s most-followed accounts

Some 12% of accounts with fewer than 500,000 followers discuss politics and/or news and current events. But that share falls to 7% among accounts with more than 1 million followers.

By contrast, a much larger share of high-follower accounts discuss topics such as humor, entertainment and promotional content.

The typical following list contains a range of account sizes, from niche accounts to those with millions of followers

Around one-fifth of the typical adult’s following list are social media influencers with more than 1 million total followers. At the same time, about 25% of the accounts a typical user follows are small, mostly personal accounts with fewer than 5,000 followers themselves.

On average, TikTok users ages 18 to 34 follow more than three times as many accounts as those 50 and older. They also follow a larger number – and a larger share – of very popular accounts with more than 1 million followers.

Every user’s following list is largely unique to them

The accounts that Americans follow on TikTok are almost entirely bespoke to each individual user. The 664 TikTok users in this study collectively follow nearly a quarter-million other accounts. Some users follow only a handful of accounts, while others follow thousands.

There is also nearly no overlap in the accounts U.S. adults follow. Just 5% of these accounts are followed by five or more users in the study.

How these findings compare with other social platforms

In 2022,

After collecting all the accounts followed by this representative group of users, we first wanted to see what types of accounts they are.

By examining their site bios and other available information, we found that:

• 38% of these accounts are small accounts (fewer than 5,000 followers) that are largely maintained by individuals as a personal profile on the site.
• 46% belong to individual creators or influencers who have built up a larger audience, but who are not publicly prominent outside of their specific social media niche.
• 12% belong to organizations, highly prominent influencers with more than 1 million followers or individuals with a significant level of public prominence outside social media.

The 12% of accounts that belong to organizations and public figures is itself made up of many different subgroups. Nearly half of these accounts are internet celebrities and mega-influencers with more than a million TikTok followers. That works out to roughly 6% of all the accounts followed by U.S. adults on the platform.

Around one-in-five accounts in this group belong to consumer products or commercial brands. That works out to 2% of all followed accounts. And a similar share are traditional celebrities (such as movie stars or individual athletes) or celebrity groups (such as bands or comedy troupes).

Very few of these accounts belong to people or entities directly related to politics, government or the news media. Each of these groups make up less than half of 1% of all accounts followed by U.S. adult TikTok users. And the typical U.S. adult on the platform follows no professional journalists or political commentators, news organizations, politicians or candidates, or government agencies.

What the accounts followed by U.S. adult TikTok users post about

In addition to classifying what the accounts followed by U.S. adult TikTok users are, we also wanted to know what sorts of topics they post about. To do this, we collected each account’s five most recent videos (data collection conducted June 14-20, 2024) and used machine learning to identify several common topical themes and content types present in these videos.

As noted above, 38% of the accounts followed by U.S. adults on TikTok have fewer than 5,000 followers. We excluded these accounts from this part of the analysis, for several reasons. First, many of these accounts simply have very little content to examine. More than half have posted fewer than 20 videos over the life of the account, and a quarter have never posted. Around 10% of these smaller accounts are set to private, which prevented us from accessing their videos at all (just 2% of followed accounts with 5,000 or more followers are private).

The most common topics posted by these accounts are related to entertainment and popular culture. Over half (59%) of followed accounts were observed posting pop culture or entertainment-related material. Other common topics are highlights of the short-form vertical video format native to TikTok. Some 36% of accounts were observed posting humorous or comedic content, such as jokes, skits and parody videos. And 37% posted made-for-social media music, dance or lip-sync performances.

Focus on news and politics content

Content related to news and politics is quite rare by comparison. Only 10% of these followed accounts were observed posting about politics during the study period, and just 5% posted content directly related to news or current events.

And as rare as this content is in general, it is even rarer among the most popular accounts. Around 12% of accounts with fewer than 500,000 followers could be observed posting about news and/or politics. For accounts between 500,000 and 1 million followers, that share is just 9%, and above 1 million followers it drops even further to 7% of accounts.

By contrast, a much larger share of popular accounts post promotional content (including self-promotion). Around one-in-five accounts with 5,000 to 10,000 followers were observed posting promotional content of some kind. But that share increased to 46% for accounts with a million followers or more.

The accounts that do post about news or politics typically do so in the context of other types of content. Three-quarters of accounts that were observed posting about news or politics also posted content from one or more of the other category types we looked at – often humor and/or pop culture.

And although older TikTok users tend to follow fewer accounts than younger users do, news and politics makes up a slightly larger share of the following lists of older users. For users ages 50 and older, the average share of followed accounts observed posting about news or politics is 10%, compared with 7% for users 18 to 34. By contrast, the share of followed accounts that post about pop culture and entertainment is lower among older users than younger ones.

Focus on the 100 accounts followed by the largest share of U.S. adults

The prominence of influencers and entertainers in Americans’ following lists is even more apparent if we focus on the 100 individual accounts followed by the largest share of U.S. adults.

Seventy of these 100 accounts belong to internet celebrities or influencers who rose to prominence by way of social media. The second largest group – 25 of the top 100 – belong to “traditional” celebrities, such as actor Will Smith, comedian Kevin Hart and TV personality Gordon Ramsey.

And as was true of Americans’ followed accounts more broadly, traditional journalistic enterprises are a rarity in this list of 100 as well. Just two “news organization” accounts are present on this list: ESPN and The Daily Show.

These accounts also mirror the broader universe when it comes to the topics they post about. Two-thirds of the most followed accounts posted humor or comedy content, while more than half of them posted personal updates or vlogs. And more than half of them posted content that directly endorsed a brand or product.

Meanwhile, just nine of the 100 top accounts mentioned news and political topics on their content. And most of these were from outside the world of politics or traditional news, with one such example being music artist Lizzo.

Tags: Digital News Landscape Social Media & the News TikTok