Digital news has become an important part of The diet of the American media, with social media playing a crucial role in news consumption. Today, half of American adults receive news at least sometimes from social media.
Information consumption on social networks
When it comes to where Americans regularly get social media news, Facebook outranks all other social media sites. Three in ten American adults say they regularly receive information there. Slightly fewer (26%) regularly receive information on YouTube.
Smaller stocks regularly receive news on Instagram (16%), TikTok (14%), X (12%) or Reddit (8%). Even fewer Americans regularly receive news from Nextdoor (5%), LinkedIn (5%), Snapchat (4%), WhatsApp (3%), or Twitch (1%).
(Seven in ten American adults say they have seen or heard something about Twitter changing its name to took place in July 2023.)
Some social media sites – despite their relatively small overall audience – are distinguished by a high proportion of users who regularly visit the site for information. For example, about half of X users (53%) receive information there. In contrast, only 15% of Snapchat users regularly receive information on the application.
Who consumes information on each social media site
There are demographic differences, particularly by gender, in who regularly turns to each social media site for information. Women make up a larger proportion of regular news consumers on Nextdoor (66%), Facebook (62%), Instagram (59%) and TikTok (58%), while men make up a larger share on sites like Reddit (67%). , X (62%) and YouTube (58%).
Some partisan differences also emerge when it comes to who regularly receives information on certain social media sites. The majority of regular news consumers on many sites are Democrats or mostly Democrats. No social media sites included here have regular news consumers who are more likely to be Republicans or lean Republicans, although there is no significant partisan difference among news consumers on Facebook, X or Nextdoor. (Read the appendix for data on U.S. adults in each demographic and party who regularly receive news from each social media site.)
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This fact sheet was compiled by Research Analyst Jacob Liedke and research associate Lu Xuan Wang.
Read it methodology and the top line.
The Pew Research Center is an affiliate of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its principal funder. This is the latest report from the Pew Research Center’s ongoing survey on the state of news, reporting, and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Follow these links for a more in-depth analysis of news consumption:
Information platform factsheetNovember 15, 2023
More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend on most other social media sitesNovember 15, 2023
Americans follow the news less closely than beforeOctober 24, 2023
Black Americans’ experiences with the newsSeptember 26, 2023
American adults under 30 now trust news from social media almost as much as news from national media.October 27, 2022
More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend on other social media sitesOctober 21, 2022
The role of alternative social media in the news and information environmentOctober 6, 2022
Twitter is the essential social network for American journalists, but not for the publicJune 27, 2022
Twitter News: Consumed by Most Users and Trusted by ManyNovember 15, 2021
More than eight in ten Americans receive news through digital devicesJanuary 12, 2021
Measuring information consumption in the digital ageDecember 8, 2020
Many Americans get their news from YouTube, where news organizations and independent producers thrive side by sideSeptember 28, 2020
Americans who primarily get their news from social media are less engaged and less informedJuly 30, 2020
Read all reports and short readings related to information platforms and sources.
