Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
As people are exposed to more information from more sources than ever before, how they define and feel about “news” has become less clear-cut. Most people agree that information must be factual, up to date and important to society to be considered news.
The share of news influencers in our sample with a Bluesky account roughly doubled in the four months after Election Day 2024, from 21% beforehand to 43% by March.
53% of Republicans have at least some trust in information from national news outlets in 2025, up from 40% in 2024.
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Read 10 key findings from recent Pew Research Center reports about today’s digital news media landscape.
Overall, 36% of Americans get science news at least a few times a week and three-in-ten actively seek it. Most get science news from general news outlets, but more see specialty sources as being accurate.
People deal in varying ways with tensions about what information to trust and how much they want to learn. Some are interested and engaged with information; others are wary and stressed.
Today, 67% of U.S. adults get at least some news on social media. Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat serve as sources of news for more of their users, though Facebook still leads as a source of news for Americans.
Many Americans turned to Google to learn about the Flint water crisis. An analysis of aggregated searches over time illustrates how, in today’s digital environment, public interest shifts as a story unfolds.
Blacks were more likely than whites to act upon online news in two particular ways: speaking with someone offline and saving news for later.
A unique study of Americans’ online news habits over the course of a week provides a detailed window into how Americans learn about current events in the digital age.
About two-in-three U.S. adults say fake news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues. And nearly a quarter say they have ever shared completely made-up news.
More than half of U.S. smartphone users say they get push notifications on their phones’ screens, but only about half of those who ever get these alerts click through to the full story.
