More than 8 out of 10 teenagers who have TikTok access the platform daily and have received political content during the elections period, according to a survey conducted by World Vision Romania.
„Over 84% of teenagers aged 14 to 19 with a TikTok account access the platform daily, and over half of them (53.4%) access the platform more than four times a day. On average, young people spend around two and a half hours on the platform, and opening an account is done around the age of 13.”
More than 4 out of 10 young people (41.6%) do not fact-check the information provided on TikTok, and 1 out of 10 young people have self-diagnosed a psychological problem after viewing content on the platform," the organization stated in a press release sent on Tuesday.
According to the study, females tend to use the TikTok platform more often than males.
What content do young people prefer
When asked what type of content they frequently view on the TikTok platform, 79.2% of young people indicate entertainment, 46.3% informational content, 45.7% social content, 44.7% educational content, 19.7% political content, and 14.8% news pages. One quarter of young people (25.6%) create content on the platform.
Youth mostly follow accounts of friends and acquaintances (76.8%), celebrities (68.6%), specialists in certain fields (36.7%), politicians (15.2%), or journalists (9.9%).
According to the study results, there are no major differences between urban and rural areas on TikTok. Thus, the platform is an instrument that "mitigates differences, and adolescents in urban and rural areas have similar consumption behaviors," explains World Vision Romania.
Among the feelings they had when seeing this information are: a third felt informed (33.8%), almost a quarter felt amused (23.6%), 2 out of 10 teenagers felt confused (19.6%), and 1 out of 7 young people felt outraged (14.2%). More than a quarter (27%) shared political content during the election period," the survey reveals.
Moreover, 1 out of 10 young people self-diagnosed a psychological problem (depression, autism, ADHD) after viewing content on TikTok, and 6 out of 10 young people (61.2%) believe that TikTok can offer ''viable, useful'' psychological advice.
Among the young people who "self-diagnosed" with a psychological problem on TikTok, 7.8% followed a treatment for this condition, recommended by the platform, less than 1% of the total respondents.
The questionnaire was conducted on a sample of 1,178 respondents, aged between 14 and 19 years (with an average age of 16.4 years). The base was weighted by gender and residency categories according to INS. The survey has a margin of error of +/-3% for a 95% confidence interval, as reported by World Vision Romania.