I'm sure they do. Is that their primary source? Do they use nothing else? Is any of that information put to economic use in their lives or is it just curiosity?
The line of questioning was about news and knowledge, not ads. Ads in anything will affect people's purchases, so that's not evidence for what that question was actually going for.
TikTok replaces YouTube and Tumblr before that. It's not like people are watching it instead of reading history books or the New Yorker.
And just because you use TikTok doesn't mean you don't check actual news headlines or listen to two-hour-long podcasts.