Americans’ Use of Social Media in 2026
Today YouTube and Facebook are the most-widely used online platforms. Explore the demographic patterns and trends shaping the social media landscape.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Read our research on:
Social Media
What Do Health and Wellness Influencers Post About?
Just over half of health and wellness content on social media focuses on healthy living, while about a third discusses medical topics. And 38% of posts have a product or service promotion.
Online Community and Connection in America
Nearly four-in-ten U.S. adults are in an online community. These virtual third spaces can take many forms, like Facebook groups, online video games or fandom forums on Reddit.
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Social Media
Publications
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Victims of Online Harassment Describe Their Experiences
73% of adult internet users have seen someone be harassed in some way online and 40% have personally experienced it. Respondents who have personally experienced online harassment were asked to elaborate about their most recent incident in their own words.
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Online Harassment
40% of internet users have personally experienced online harassment, from the mild to the severe; 73% have witnessed it happen to others.
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Turks don’t like their national press much, but rely on it heavily for news
Only 32% of Turks said that the media is having a good influence on the way things are going in Turkey.
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Social Media and the ‘Spiral of Silence’
Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms did not provide new outlets for the discussion of the Snowden-NSA revelations. People who thought their social media friends disagreed with them were less likely to discuss the issues in person and online.
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Where was Ferguson in my Facebook feed?
There were big differences in the content related to Ferguson on Twitter and Facebook. Was the reason what users wanted from each, or the sites’ algorithms?
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Cable, Twitter picked up Ferguson story at a similar clip
The shooting death of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, quickly became a national news story on mainstream and social media last week. A new Pew Research Center analysis of media coverage of the event and subsequent protests finds that the story emerged on Twitter before cable, but the trajectory of attention quickly rose in […]
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Politics and advocacy in the social media era
Pew Research findings on the state of social media and its impact on grassroots and advocacy
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Streams, Stacks, Snacks, Socials, Signals
Networked information and the different ways users receive, process, create, and share it.
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Can Twitter survive in a Facebook world? The key is being different
In November 2010, 8% of online adults used the platform. As of January 2014, 19% of online adults were using Twitter.
