Some 54% of US adults say they receive news from social media to some degree, according to a poll published on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.
The two main social media platforms on which a third of the responders said they received their news were Facebook and YouTube.
Instagram came in third, with 20% of respondents stating they received their news from it, followed by TikoTok with 17% and X/Twitter with 12%.
Other sites mentioned were Reddit, with 8%; Nextdoor, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, with 5% each; Linkedin, with 4%, Truth Social, with 3%; and Rumble, with 5%. When analyzing each platform separately, the poll found that some platforms are more utilized for news than others. For example, 59% of X users said they used the platform for news. A similar response was made by 57% of users of Truth Social and 52% of TikTok users. By comparison, only 14% of Linkdin users said they use it for receiving news.
Breaking down the responses by categories, the poll found that diverse audiences receive their news from different platforms.
According to the poll, over half of the main consumers of news on Nextdoor, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram are women.
By contrast, on Reddit, X, Rumble, Truth Social, and YouTube, more than half of the audience receiving news from such platforms are men.
The poll also indicated that younger populations received news from Reddit, X, Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram.
Political views
With regard to political views, according to the Pew poll, 88% of Truth Social users who consume news on the site and 83% of Rumble users were Republicans or independents with Republican views. This was the same for half of those who say they consume news on Facebook and YouTube.
However, audiences who consume news on WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and Nextdoor said they were Democrats or held such views.
Audiences who received their news via X were almost equally divided between the two parties.
The poll survey was carried out between July 15 and August 4, 2024.