How Americans Get News on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram
X is still more of a news destination than these other platforms, but the vast majority of users on all four see news-related content.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
X is still more of a news destination than these other platforms, but the vast majority of users on all four see news-related content.
In recent years, several new options have emerged in the social media universe, many of which explicitly present themselves as alternatives to more established social media platforms. Free speech ideals and heated political themes prevail on these sites, which draw praise from their users and skepticism from other Americans.
Fully 70% of U.S. adult Twitter news consumers say they have used Twitter to follow live news events, up from 59% who said this in 2015.
About half (48%) of U.S. adults say they get news from social media “often” or “sometimes,” a 5 percentage point decline compared with 2020. More than half of Twitter users get news on the site regularly.
Roughly half of U.S. adults say they have listened to a podcast in the past year, including one-in-five who report listening at least a few times a week. Most podcast listeners say this experience includes hearing news, which they largely expect to be mostly accurate. Large shares of listeners say they turn to podcasts for entertainment, learning or having something to listen to while doing something else.
About half of U.S. adults say they get news from social media “often” or “sometimes,” and this use is spread out across a number of different sites. Facebook stands out as a regular source of news for about a third of Americans.
Videos from independent news producers are more likely to cover subjects negatively and discuss conspiracy theories.
More than half of these social media news consumers say they have encountered made-up news about COVID-19.
U.S. adults in this group are less likely to get the facts right about COVID-19 and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.
Getting news from social media is an increasingly common experience; nearly three-in-ten U.S. adults do so often.
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