Social Media Platforms Used As News Sources?

The Covid-19 pandemic changed how Americans get around in ways that could be long-lasting. What it didn’t change was our appetite for cars and pickup trucks. 

Half (50%) of US adults get news from social media either sometimes (31%) or often (19%), on par with last year (also 50%) and up slightly from 48% in 2021, according to data from the Pew Research Center. However, some platforms’ users are less likely to turn to them for news these days than in the past, while some others’ users are more apt to regularly get their news from them.

Facebook remains the most common social media platform for American adults’ news consumption, with 30% of adults regularly getting their news from the site. However, the share of Facebook’s users who regularly get news there has dropped to 43% this year from 54% in 2020.

Likewise, a smaller share of X (Twitter) users are regularly getting their news from the platform now (53%) than in 2020 (59%). This translates to about 1 in 8 (12% of) US adults regularly getting their news from the platform, which has suffered from a litany of issues this year, prior to and after its rebrand.

On the ascent, meanwhile, is Instagram. More than one-third (34%) of Instagram users report regularly getting their news from the platform, up from 28% in 2020, and translating to 16% of adults overall, up from 13% last year.

TikTok is enjoying an even more rapid ascent as a news source. Fully 43% of its users say they regularly get their news from it, about twice the share (22%) from 2020. This means that 14% of US adults regularly get their news from TikTok, up from 10% last year and 6% in 2021. TikTok is now fourth on the list of the most-used platforms for news, trailing only Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

While few adults overall regularly use Nextdoor (5%) and Twitch (1%) to get news, a growing proportion of these platforms’ users regularly get their news from them, at 28% (up from 23% last year) and 17% (up from 11% in 2020), respectively.

The latest survey results also reveal some significant differences in the demographic makeup of each platform’s regular news consumers. For example, a majority of regular news consumers on YouTube (58%), X (62%), Reddit (67%) and LinkedIn (53%) are men, while the opposite is true for regular news consumers on Facebook (62% women), Instagram (59%), TikTok (58%) and Nextdoor (66%).

A plurality of regular news consumers on Facebook (40%), YouTube (38%), Nextdoor (31%) and LinkedIn (38%) are ages 30-49, while the largest share of regular news consumers on Instagram (42%), TikTok (44%) and Reddit (48%) are ages 18-29.

Turning to educational attainment, regular news consumers on LinkedIn easily skew the most educated, at 60% with at least a college degree, while regular news consumers on TikTok skew the most in the other direction, with 42% having a high school diploma or less.

In terms of race/ethnicity, a high of 56% of regular news consumers on Nextdoor are White, compared to a low of 36% on Instagram.

Finally, regular news consumers skew most heavily to the Democrat side of party identification on Reddit (64% share), LinkedIn (60%) and TikTok (60%). Facebook is the only platform in which a greater share of regular news consumers identify as Republican or Republican-leaning (47%) than Democrat or Democrat-leaning (46%), albeit by the slimmest of margins.

For more, check out the full results here.