Earlier this summer, a Google exec admitted that TikTok was eating into its core Search business, particularly among younger users. But that's not all TikTok is now being used for, a new Pew Research Center study indicates. According to the findings from a report that examined Americans' use of social media for news consumption, 33% of TikTok users now say they regularly get their news on the social video app, up from just 22% in 2020.

Meanwhile, nearly every other social media site saw declines across that same metric -- including, in particular, Facebook, where now only 44% of its users report regularly getting their news there, down from 54% just two years ago.

Image Credits: Pew Research

This data suggests TikTok has grown from being just an entertainment platform for lip syncs, dances, and comedy to one that many of its users turn to in order to learn about what's happening in their world.

That may raise concerns, given TikTok's connections to China -- a topic it was recently pressed to clarify in a Senate hearing focused on national security. The hearing had followed the release of a BuzzFeed News report that had discovered how China-based ByteDance employees had been regularly accessing TikTok's U.S. users' private data.

If TikTok were to become one of the primary ways younger people in the U.S. learned about news and current events, then the app could potentially provide a channel for a foreign power to influence those users' beliefs with subtle tweaks to its algorithm.

For the time being, however, TikTok is not a primary source of news consumption across social media -- that honor still resides with Facebook.

Pew found that 31% of U.S. adults report regularly getting their news from Facebook, which is higher than the 25% who get their news from YouTube, the 14% who get it from Twitter, or the13% who get it from Instagram.

TikTok was in fifth place by this ranking, as only 10% of U.S. adults said they regularly get their news on the video app. (Of course, when TikTok's sizable user base of those under the age of 18 grows up, these metrics could quickly change.)