Biden, Trump debate bashing took off on TikTok

• Young adults overwhelmingly use social media for their news— especially TikTok — and are less likely to tune into other news sources.

Driving the news: Negative Biden videos garnered more than 50 million views as of 2pm ET on Friday, according to an analysis by CredoIQ of the top 300 TikTok posts reacting to the debate.

• That's more than triple the roughly 15 million views that negative Trump videos got on the platform, which tends to favor conservative-leaning content, per the analysis.
• But videos that were negative towards both candidates received more than 40 million views, reinforcing the broadly pessimistic sense that many young people have about the election.

Zoom in: Just 3.9 million 18-34 year-olds tuned in to the first presidential debate on live TV, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen, meaning many in this key demographic are learning about the debate only from viral clips they see on social media.

• That reality presented an opportunity for the two candidates to try to get ahead of their own narratives by posting viral clips — but it also came with a risk.

• In the case of Biden, the social media content that broke through was videos of his stumbles or freezes. For Trump, it was his repeated false claims about important policy areas.

What to watch: The Biden campaign is trying to aggressively court young voters, who helped carry him to victory in 2020, but may be souring on him ahead of November.

• Biden's handling of the war in Gaza has become a major flashpoint for young voters, who often share pro-Palestinian content via social media such as TikTok.

Go deeper: CNN's Trump-Biden debate draws 48 million viewers in drop from past elections