After declaring her presidential campaign Sunday, Vice President Harris is taking the popular social media app TikTok by storm, inspiring memes, songs, and newfound support for the Democratic candidate. In light of TikTok’s ties to Communist China, however, the surge of support for the likely Democratic party nominee on the app raises questions over whether the authorities at Beijing have their thumb on the scale.

In an election in which young people were expressing deep pessimism and frustration with their choices, the outpouring of apparent support for the vice president could help buoy her with a critical voting bloc. 

For years, though, Congress has been investigating the social media titan and its parent company, ByteDance, for their ties to the Chinese Communist Party. At least one former employee has alleged that the algorithm used to curate videos feeds for young people around the world can be deployed to further the political aims of Communist China.

TikTok is a leading news source for young people, and caused some headaches for the Biden administration in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas. The app amplified the voices of app users who denounced the president as a perpetrator of genocide, a white supremacist, and warmonger.

A Pew Research survey from 2023 found that one-third of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 39 use TikTok as their primary news source. 

How young Americans consume media will be critical to this campaign, and Ms. Harris’ strong start on the social media app could help her dominate with young people — a demographic with which President Biden had been struggling for months. 

Political professionals are already taking note of Ms. Harris’ apparently skyrocketing popularity on TikTok. CNN’s Van Jones, an ally of the vice president, says TikTok has helped Ms. Harris go from “cringe to cool” in the wake of her decision to jump into the race. 

“There’s something happening that’s hard to quantify, because what’s happening on TikTok right now, is extraordinary,” Mr. Jones said. “All the things that were cringey about Kamala, her laugh, the coconut tree comment, being unburdened by what — all those weird things she’s said.”

Some of the “weird things” that Ms. Harris has said in the past have taken off online in pro-Harris circles. In a 2023 speech in which she was swearing in executive branch officials, Ms. Harris told a story about her mother that would later become a pillar of the Harris meme canon.

“My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” Ms. Harris said with a laugh. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

The coconut tree speech was one of the first odd moments for Ms. Harris that helped rally supporters. Before Mr. Biden dropped his reelection bid, Democrats on X, formerly known as Twitter, were putting emojis of coconuts and palm trees in their usernames. 

On TikTok, the coconut tree speech has been omnipresent. The pop star Kesha has already posted two videos of her dancing with a mashup of Ms. Harris’ coconut line and one of her own songs. The two videos combined have garnered nearly one million likes, and nearly seven million views. 

Interest in the 2024 election has shot up on the app, especially in Ms. Harris’ candidacy, after young voters have been telling pollsters for months that they were feeling apathetic and deeply disappointed that both Mr. Biden and President Trump were the two nominees again this year. 

According to TikTok’s own data, hashtags tied to the 2024 election now take six of the top ten slots for more used hashtags this week. The number three slot is filled by #kamalaharris and the number five slot is taken simply by #kamala.

The #kamalaharris tag has been used in nearly 10,000 posts in just the last seven days, and have garnered more than 100 million views in that same time period. The #kamala tag has been used more than 5,000 times, getting 29 million views in the last week. 

The use of another hashtag — #harris2024 — has, according to the analytics, taken off among young people. Use of that tag has increased 1,500 percent on Sunday alone, the day Ms. Harris announced her candidacy. The TikTok data shows that 81 percent of the posts using that hashtag came from TikTok users between the ages of 18 and 24. 

Ms. Harris’ support on TikTok is especially lighthearted, including videos of her dancing, laughing, and cracking jokes. One video posted on the app on Monday shows Ms. Harris dancing and laughing in a drum line in 2019, when she was running in that cycle’s Democratic primary.

As Ms. Harris marches with the young drummers and dancers, the caption of the video says, “Kamala Harris on her way to the White House.” That video has already garnered 1.6 million likes.