The Chinese-owned social media app TikTok is growing in popularity among the younger generation and is becoming a factor in the upcoming European elections, politicians and experts say ahead of the EU elections – despite ongoing privacy and security concerns at the EU level.
Young voters are more likely than the average population to find information on social media, claimed digital expert Ingrid Brodnig and Markus Zimmer, CEO of the Austrian social media market research agency BuzzValue, in an interview with the Austrian Press Agency APA at the end of last year.
MEPs are now also trying to get on TikTok in order to reach young voters. The German Greens, for example, plan to reach out to younger voters through TikTok in their campaign for the European Parliament elections in June.
The Green Party’s top candidate for the European elections, Terry Reintke, said the move was intended to show how important young and first-time voters were to the party, whose main focus has traditionally been on environmental issues.
While there had been concerns over using TikTok for campaigning, the Greens did not want to “leave this space to the far-right”, said party managing director Emily Büning.
Last year, the European Commission and the European Parliament banned their staff from using TikTok on their work mobile phones for security reasons. TikTok has long been accused of inadequate data security and a lack of protection for young users.
“Do what counts”
In the European elections, Germany’s Greens are campaigning under the slogan “Do what counts.”
The party’s focus would be on the future of the European Union’s Green Deal, aimed at making the bloc carbon-neutral by 2050, Reintke said. She accused conservative and far-right forces of “taking an axe to the Green Deal.”
German Greens co-leader Omid Nouripour said the party would focus on three themes, “peace and security, prosperity and safeguarding the climate, and democracy and freedom.”
The party also plans to put up posters across Germany with slogans promoting democracy and freedom to counter the “massive shift to the right” it expects to see in the elections.
Opinion polls for the European elections in Germany put the Greens at between 11 percent and 16 percent, well short of the 20.5 percent they secured in the 2019 European elections, their best result to date.
This article is part of the enr’s EU Elections Spotlight: Gen Z going to the EU ballots. The content is based on news by agencies participating in the enr.