Half of US Adults get their news from social media

[JoelR]

Newsflash: Half of US adults are getting their news, at least sometimes, from social media, according to a new study of American news consumption habits from the Pew Research Center.

Which social media, to be exact? According to the research, which surveyed 8,842 US adults between Sept. 25 and Oct. 1, Facebook—which has steadily deprioritized news content—is king, with three in 10 respondents saying they regularly get news from the platform. YouTube was also a major source for news, with around a quarter (26%) of respondents stating they regularly get news from the site. Instagram was next with 16%, while 14% of respondents said they regularly get news from TikTok.

While the number of Americans getting news from TikTok remains a small percentage, its popularity as a news source among its user base is growing.

• Among users of the app, more than four in 10 (43%) reported regularly getting news from TikTok, Elisa Shearer, a senior researcher at Pew, told Marketing Brew.
• That’s in line with the percentage of Facebook users who reported regularly getting news from the platform, and is 10 percentage points lower than X (formerly Twitter), where 53% of users reported regularly getting news from the app.

“When we first asked this question in 2020, about 20% of TikTok users got news there regularly,” Shearer explained. “This year, that almost doubled to 43%.”

Inspired by Pew Research Center: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/fact-sheet/social-media-and-news-fact-sheet/

[Mariya]

One of the reasons why fake news is circulating is because a lot of people are consuming news from social media. They tend to believe whatever they get to read via social sites. While social sites are good platforms to discover content, including news, it is also important to see the original creator of news. You should never go after stories published by every Tom, Dick, and Hary. You only need to believe in news published by reputed news media.

[Shortie]

This is not surprising. There is so much fake news going around and with how much time the average person spends on the internet these days, a lot of the news can be taken in regardless of whether it is confirmed news or rumours. 

More needs to be done to push the word out there that news from confirmed trustworthy providers should be the only news to take into account. 

 

[Destiny]

I can't say I am shocked by this news. The amount of people who rely on social media to keep up with the latest news is shockingly high and it's been proven that a lot of news that is not confirmed is posted on these platforms. 

I would love to see more put in place to allow people who read their news on social media to let them know that what they are reading is possibly fake news, it's a shame that is not something that is used more.