Hillary Clinton is speaking up about how misinformation on social media is influencing young people’s views, specifically when it comes to Israel and Palestine.
The former Secretary of State spoke at the Israel Hayom Summit on Tuesday in New York City, where she said it’s a “serious problem” that “smart, well-educated young people” are getting most of their information from platforms like TikTok.
“That is where they were learning about what happened on Oct. 7, what happened in the, days, weeks and months to follow,” she said. “It’s a serious problem for democracy, whether it’s Israel or the United States, and it’s a serious problem for our young people.”
At one point, Clinton recalled her recent teaching experience at Columbia University, where she saw how students’ opinions were being shaped by social media clips, which she said often contained propaganda or misinformation, including about the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel in 2023.
“When you would try to talk to them to engage in some kind of reasonable discussion, it was very difficult because they did not know history,” she said. “They had very little context. And what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda.”
Clinton also noted that when it comes to who’s being influenced, it’s “not just the usual suspects.” She explained, “It is a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand.”
“A lot of the challenge is with younger people. More than 50 percent of young people in America get their news from social media. So just pause on that for a second. They are seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all representing what they claim to be showing, and that’s where they get their information.”
According to the Pew Research Center, about half of U.S. adults, specially 53 percent, say they at least sometimes get their news from social media in 2025. As for TikTok specifically, just over half of users (55 percent) say they regularly get news on the video platform.
Clinton isn’t the first person to raise concerns about the way information is spread among young people on social media. In November 2023, Real Time host Bill Maher shared his thoughts following a surge of antisemitic rhetoric that went viral on TikTok after the Oct. 7 attack.
