In color theory, you evaluate a color using three elementary components, the actual base color, called hue, how dark or light the color may be, called value and how intense it is. The intensity is sometimes also called the chroma or saturation.
In terms of painting, once you have a hue, there are only a three ways to manipulate it: shade, tone or tint. Take a brilliant red, for example. You could add purple, but that changes the hue. Instead you may shade it by adding pure black. You may tone it by adding add a gray of any value. You may also tint it by adding pure white.
With a very large addition of white, you can make the hue very pale. As long as it has some hue left, it is a tint. On the other hand, you may prefer to lightly tint a color to produce a value just a little lighter than the original hue. There is no objective preference for one type of tint over another, it all comes down the practical need of a design, painting or project.
In practice, when painting, the pigment of white paint is not as potent as that of other colors. That means you need less green or brown to create a tint between white and the color you are tinting. For that reason, it's better to start with white, when tinting, and mix small bits of the hue you're tinting with it. This saves paint and gives you more control of the tinting process.