Social media playing crucial role in Americans’ news diets, states Pew Research Center
Digital sources have become an important part of Americans’ news diets – with social media playing a crucial role, particularly for younger adults, reports the Pew Research Center. Overall, just over half of U.S. adults (54%) say they at least sometimes get news from social media, up slightly compared with the last few years.
According to Pew, Facebook and YouTube outpace all other social media sites as places where Americans regularly get news. About a third of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on each of these two sites.
Smaller shares of Americans regularly get news on Instagram (20%), TikTok (17%) or X, formerly known as Twitter (12%). And even fewer get news on several other sites, including Reddit (8%), Nextdoor (5%), Snapchat (5%), WhatsApp (5%), LinkedIn (4%), Truth Social (3%) and Rumble (2%).
Some social media sites – despite having relatively small overall audiences – stand out as destinations for news among many of their users. For example, 59% of X users get news there, as do a similar share of users on Truth Social (57%), the site owned by former President Donald Trump. On the other hand, only 14% of LinkedIn users regularly get news on that platform.
About half of TikTok users (52%) say they regularly get news on the site, up from 43% in 2023 and just 22% in 2020. The share of users who get news also has risen on several other sites, including YouTube and Instagram.
The people who regularly get news on different social media sites often differ by gender, age, political party and other factors. For example, women make up greater portions of regular news consumers on Nextdoor (64%), TikTok (62%), Facebook (60%), Snapchat (60%) and Instagram (59%), while men make up greater shares on Reddit (68%), X (64%), Rumble (60%), Truth Social (58%) and YouTube (57%).
News consumers on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, X and Reddit tend to be younger than those on other sites. Other patterns are unique to individual sites. For instance, 48% of news consumers on WhatsApp are Hispanic – much higher than on any other site. And LinkedIn has the largest portion of news consumers with a college degree (55%).
More here.
