About six-in-ten adults (59 percent) see the Chinese short-video-making app TikTok as a major or minor threat to national security in the US, a new report has shown.
According to Pew Research Center, only 17 percent of Americans said that the platform is not a threat to national security, and another 23 percent were not sure.
About nine percent of TikTok users see the platform as a major threat, while 36 percent of non-users feel the same, plus 42 percent of users see the service as any kind of risk, and 65 percent of outsiders are concerned.
Views of TikTok as a threat also vary by age.
Only 13 percent of adults aged 18 to 29 said TikTok is a major threat, but these figures climb higher with older demographics.
Around 65 percent of those over 65 are nervous about TikTok, and 46 percent of that group sees it as a major threat.
Moreover, the report showed that seven-in-ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said TikTok is a threat to national security in the country, compared with 53 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners.
The report also mentioned that the public is uneasy about TikTok’s data use practices.
About 64 percent of adults said they are very or somewhat concerned about how TikTok uses data it collects from its users, while another 34 percent are not at all or not too concerned.
In May, the US state of Montana banned TikTok in an effort to protect residents from alleged Chinese intelligence gathering.
It is the first US state to ban this popular short video app.
“To protect Montanans’ personal and private data from the Chinese Communist Party, I have banned TikTok in Montana,” Montana Governor Greg Gianforte tweeted.
