It’s now been over two weeks since the U.S. House overwhelmingly passed legislation that could ban TikTok in the U.S. if ByteDance fails to divest from the app. While CivicScience data at the time found American support for the move, its path toward law in the Senate is murky. Should such a ban ever come to fruition, it could significantly impact American businesses and content creators who rely on the platform.
New CivicScience polling data show that 12% of U.S. adults classify themselves as a content creator on TikTok on some level, while 11% aren’t currently but are interested in becoming one. Unsurprisingly, TikTok’s core user base of Gen Z adults and Millennials is more than twice as likely as their older counterparts to say they’re content creators on the platform in some capacity.
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Twenty-two percent of TikTok users say at least 30% of the content they watch on TikTok is specifically from influencers/content creators (n=965 from 03/28/2024 to 04/01/2024, excluding ‘I’m not sure’). And while CivicScience previously examined where TikTok users would turn in the event of a TikTok ban, what about the platform’s creators and influencers that these users watch?
Creators, for their part, generally mirror users in terms of their top three alternatives to produce and share their content. Thanks to its TikTok-like Shorts, YouTube stands out as the leading alternative candidate, followed closely by Facebook. Instagram sits as a distant third.
Losing a core avenue for producing and sharing content isn’t the only area where a ban would impact TikTok creators. TikTok also offers its creators the ability to sell products through TikTok Shop, and creators can link to their products or services in their TikTok profile (once they have 1,000 followers or proof of business registration). Additional data find nearly a quarter of TikTok users have taken advantage of one of these options in the past six months.
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While it remains uncertain whether a full-on ban of TikTok will happen in the U.S., YouTube appears likely to gain in the fallout of this still hypothetical scenario. But could American TikTok creators currently utilizing the platform for sales weather the storm of losing their established base on TikTok and adapt to a forced migration to a new platform?
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