More than eight in ten Romanian teenagers who have access to TikTok use the platform daily and received political content during the 2024 electioneering, according to a survey conducted by World Vision Romania.

„Over 84% of teenagers aged 14 to 19 who have a TikTok account use 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 four in ten young Romanians (41.6%) do not verify the information provided on TikTok, and one in ten young people have made a diagnosis of a psychological problem after watching the content on the platform,” according to the survey.

World Vision Romania marks Safer Internet Day, February 11, by an information campaign for young people, carried out in partnership with TikTok. The campaign is based on three pillars: empathy for other users, critical thinking about content and maintaining a digital balance in the use of the platform.

„Specifically, TikTok today sends information to all users about the tools that give them control over the experience on the platform. In addition, the young people from the Children’s Advisory Council of World Vision Romania have launched, on the foundation’s TikTok account, a series of videos through which they aim to convey clear and practical information on how TikTok content can be used responsibly,” according to World Vision.

The executive director of the foundation, Mihaela Nabar, underscored the importance of understanding consumption habits and the reasons behind them, in order to come up with concrete solutions.

„This is the second year that TikTok has come to the World Vision Romania Foundation on Safer Internet Day, so that in partnership we can reach as many users as possible with information about the safe use of the platform and social medias, in general. This year, the partnership coincided with the launch of the TikTok Generation survey that we wanted to carry out since the election. The importance and influence that the TikTok platform has among teenagers is obvious, with 28% of them spending more than three hours on the platform, becoming rather ‘a good friend,'” said Nabar.

According to the survey released by World Vision, eight in ten young Romanian people (84.2%) access the TikTok platform daily. Over half of them (53.4%) access the platform more than four times a day. Women tend to use the TikTok platform more often than men.

„The time spent on the Internet is directly correlated with the frequency of using the TikTok platform: on average, young people spend two and a half hours on TikTok per day, according to the survey, and over five hours on the Internet, in general. At the same time, young people who access more often and spend more minutes on the platform consider it more useful for them.”

Asked about the type of content they frequently view on the TikTok platform, 79.2% of young people indicate entertainment, 46.3% informational content, 45.7% social, 44.7% educational, 19.7% political and 14.8% news pages. A quarter of young people (25.6%) create content on the platform.

Young people follow the accounts of friends and close people the most (76.8%), celebrities (68.6%), specialists in certain fields (36.7%), politicians (15.2%) or journalists (9.9%).

According to the findings of the survey, there are no major differences between urban and rural TikTok users. Thus, the platform is a tool that „mitigates differences, and urban and rural teenagers have similar consumption behaviours.”

„Over 41% of young people do not check the information they find on TikTok, but of those who do, 84% look for additional information on Google. Over 43% of young people consider the information provided by TikTok to be credible to a large or very large extent. Eight in ten young people received, during the electioneering and later during the election period, content on TikTok about the elections. Among the feelings they had when they saw such information were: a third felt informed (33.8%), almost a quarter felt amused (23.6%), two in ten adolescents felt confused (19.6%), and one in seven young people felt revolted (14.2%). More than a quarter (27%) shared political content during the elections,” the survey shows.

Also, one in ten young people have made a diagnosis of a psychological problem (depression, autism, ADHD) after viewing content on TikTok, and six in ten young people (61.2%) believe that TikTok can offer „viable, useful” psychological advice.

Of the young people who „self-diagnosed” with a psychological problem on TikTok, 7.8% followed a treatment for their condition, recommended by the platform, less than 1% of all respondents.

The survey was conducted on a sample of 1,178 respondents, aged between 14 and 19 years (with an average age of 16.4 years). The basis was weighted on the categories of gender and medium of residence according to the national statistics. The survey has a margin of error of +/-3% for a 95% confidence interval.

AGERPRES