Shocking Survey Results: TikTok Makes Young Germany More Sceptic In Vaccines And Climate Change!

TikTok affects young people's fields of vaccine information. (photo: dock. unsplash)

JAKARTA German people who get news via TikTok tend to be less likely to see China as a dictatorship. They are also, less critical of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and are more skeptical of climate change and the benefits of vaccines than other media consumers.

The findings, based on a Allensbach survey for foundations linked to Germany's liberal and pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), suggest that only users of Elon Musk's platform X are close to a similar level of tendency to believe in conspiracy theories such as TikTok users.

The survey comes amid debates in the United States over whether the law banning Chinese-owned applications for national security reasons should be enforced or not. These findings provide arguments for those who say that the platform spreads misinformation that poses a risk of damaging pluralistic democracy.

In a survey of about 2,000 people by the end of 2024, it was found that consumers of traditional media are much more likely to see Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an illegal act and believe that Germany should support Kyiv an attitude opposed by the Alternative right-wing party to Germany (AfD).

TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance from China, has not yet responded to a request for comment on this survey.

Influence On The Young And Political Generation

The survey also shows that the younger generation, who are the biggest users of this video-sharing platform, are more likely to support right-wing parties such as AfD, who are currently ranked second in polls ahead of Germany's election on February 23.

Only 28.1% of TikTok users fully agree that China is a dictatorship, compared to 57% of newspaper readers and 56.5% of public TV viewers. Meanwhile, only 13.6% of TikTok users believe it is important for the West to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion, compared to 40.2% of national newspaper readers.

This survey did not reveal whether the sharp different views were caused by the information offered by the platform itself or because users already had different opinions regarding public affairs before using the platform.

Vaccines And Public Trust

Among the younger generation, only 71% believe that vaccines have saved millions of lives, with this figure dropping to 69% among TikTok users. In addition, TikTok users are less likely than traditional media consumers to believe that China and Russia are spreading false information, but are more likely to believe that the German government is doing it.

Young people are much more vulnerable to information, and TikTok plays a decisive role, saidLAH Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, deputy chairman of the foundation who ordered this survey. We must not allow misinformation from China and Russia to spread in our midst

Meanwhile, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday January 20, stated that the company should "decid independently" in terms of operations and their agreement, responding to questions about US President-elect Donald Trump's proposal regarding TikTok's 50% ownership by the US.