Social media is one of the go-to news sources in the United States – over one third of U.S. adults responding to a 2022 survey got their news from social media platforms every day, and a further 22 percent did so a few times or at least once per week. After the surge in social media news consumption in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, daily engagement fell in 2021, but the increase the following year suggests that daily news access on social networks could continue to grow in years to come.

The most popular social sites for news

An annual report surveying U.S. adults from 2019 to 2022 revealed that Facebook was the most popular social network used for news, followed by YouTube. Important to note here though is that TikTok was not included in the survey question for those years, a platform increasingly popular with younger generations. Whilst the share of adults regularly using TikTok for news aged 50 years or above was just five percent, among those aged between 18 and 29 years the figure was over five times higher.

Meanwhile, Twitter is journalists’ preferred social media site, with the share who use Twitter for their job at almost 70 percent. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter however, some journalists raised concerns about the future of free speech on the platform.

Gen Z and social media news consumption

A 2022 survey found that half of all Gen Z respondents used social media for news every day. Gen Z is driving growth in social media news usage, a trend which will continue if the younger consumers belonging to this generation increase their engagement with news as they age.

During a 2024 survey, 77 percent of respondents from Nigeria stated that they used social media as a source of news. In comparison, just 23 percent of Japanese respondents said the same. Large portions of social media users around the world admit that they do not trust social platforms either as media sources or as a way to get news, and yet they continue to access such networks on a daily basis. Social media: trust and consumption Despite the majority of adults surveyed in each country reporting that they used social networks to keep up to date with news and current affairs, a 2018 study showed that social media is the least trusted news source in the world. Less than 35 percent of adults in Europe considered social networks to be trustworthy in this respect, yet more than 50 percent of adults in Portugal, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia said that they got their news on social media. What is clear is that we live in an era where social media is such an enormous part of daily life that consumers will still use it in spite of their doubts or reservations. Concerns about fake news and propaganda on social media have not stopped billions of users accessing their favorite networks on a daily basis. Most Millennials in the United States use social media for news every day, and younger consumers in European countries are much more likely to use social networks for national political news than their older peers. Like it or not, reading news on social is fast becoming the norm for younger generations, and this form of news consumption will likely increase further regardless of whether consumers fully trust their chosen network or not.

Social media was by far the most popular news platform among 18 to 34-year-olds in the United States, with 47 percent of respondents to a survey held in August 2022 saying that they used social networks for news on a daily basis. By comparison, adults over 65 years old mostly used network news to keep up to date.

The decline of newspapers In the past, the reasons to regularly go out and purchase a print newspaper were many. Used not only for news but also apartment hunting, entertainment, and job searches (among other things), newspapers once served multiple purposes. This is no longer the case, with first television and then the internet taking care of consumer needs once covered by printed papers. Indeed, the paid circulation of daily weekday newspapers in the United States has fallen dramatically since the 1980s with no sign of future improvement.

News consumption habits

A survey on news consumption by gender found that 50 percent of women use either online-only news sites or social media for news each day, and 51 percent of male respondents said the same. Social media was by far the most used daily news platform among U.S. Millennials, and the same was true of Gen Z. One appeal of online news is that it often comes at no cost to the consumer. Paying for news found via digital outlets is not yet commonplace in the United States, with only 21 percent of U.S. consumers responding to a study held in early 2021 reporting having paid for online news content in the last year.

A survey conducted in the United States in August 2022 found that white adults were the least frequent users of social media as a news source, with a third stating that they never used social networks for news. Conversely, Black Americans were the most likely to use social media for news on a daily basis.

A study held in 2024 revealed that 59 percent of X (formerly known as Twitter) users regularly used X for news. By contrast, users of major platforms Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube were less inclined to get their news from those sites, though usage of TikTok for news increased by 30 percent between 2020 and 2024, with the platform especially popular among younger audiences.

Data from a survey held in August 2022 in the United States revealed that the most popular news source among millennials was social media, with 45 percent of respondents reporting daily news consumption on social networks. This was more than double the share who got their news via radio. When it comes to trust, though, social media does not fare well.

Social media and news consumption

As adults of all ages spend more and more time on social media, news consumption via this avenue is likely to increase, but something which could affect this trend is the lack of trust in the news consumers encounter on social platforms. Although now the preferred option for younger audiences, social networks are among the least trusted news sources in the United States, and concerns about fake news remain prevalent.

Young audiences and fake news

Inaccurate news is a major problem which worsened during the 2016 and 2020 presidential election campaigns and the COVID-19 pandemic. A global study found that most Gen Z and Millennial news consumers ignored fake coronavirus news on social media, but almost 20 percent interacted with such posts in the comments section, and over seven percent shared the content. Younger news consumers in the United States were also the most likely to report feeling overwhelmed by COVID-19 news. As younger audiences were the most likely to get their updates on the outbreak via social media, this also made them the most susceptible to fake news, and younger generations are also the most prone to ‘doomscrolling’, an addictive act where the reader pursues and digests multiple negative or upsetting news articles in one sitting.

A survey conducted in August 2022 found that Gen Z news consumers most frequently get their news from social media, with 50 percent of respondents reporting they used social networks as their news source on a daily basis. There was a general preference for online news sources rather than offline outlets among Gen Z, with only five percent saying that they read local newspapers every day.
News consumption: Gen Z vs. millennials The same 2022 study showed that whilst there were similarities between news consumption among millennials and Gen Z, there were also stark differences between the two groups. Gen Zers were significantly less likely to listen to the radio or watch television for news, and close to 60 percent said that they never read newspapers. Meanwhile, approximately 20 percent of Millennials reported listening to radio news and 15 percent watched cable or network TV on a daily basis.

Despite these differences, both Gen Z and millennial news audiences both demonstrated a clear preference for using social media to get their news. By contrast, Boomers were the least likely group to use social media for news, generally preferring network news for keeping up to date. Indeed, social networks are not without their problems, with consumers growing concerned about the news they find there. Social media and news Except for podcasts, social media is the least trusted news source in the United States. Fake news circulates there easily as consumers either unknowingly or deliberately share such content, and younger generations, who are the heaviest social media users, are at the highest risk of encountering biased, inaccurate, and untrue stories.

Data from a survey held in the United States in late 2023 found that Latino adults generally preferred either social media or television for getting news, whereas only a very small share got news via radio or print outlets. News websites and apps were the preference for 19 percent of respondents, with search being similarly popular.

In 2024, Facebook remained the most popular social media network for news worldwide, with 26 percent of respondents to a survey held in February that year saying that they had used the platform for news in the last week. Usage decreased however from previous years, whereas TikTok news consumption is on the up and was eight times higher in 2024 than in 2020.

Facebook was the most used social media platform for news consumption in 2024 in Romania, followed by YouTube. The least used social media platform for news purposes in Romania in 2024 was Instagram, while TikTok rose to the fourth place for the first time in the rankings.

The use of social media to share news stories and viewpoints was one of the most important factors in the United States Presidential Election of 2016. Among people who did use social media to access news, the most popular platform was Facebook, with 79 percent of Trump voters and 74 percent of Clinton voters saying they used this as a news source. Youtube was the second most popular social media platform for news among Trump voters, while for Clinton voters it was Twitter.

According to the results of a global survey held in early 2024, among selected major media markets, consumers in Brazil were the least likely to use print media to get their news, with just 11 percent reporting consuming print news compared to 16 percent of respondents from the United States. Meanwhile, news from social media was most popular in South Africa, and print consumption was highest in India.

A 2022 survey found that younger consumers were most likely to use social media as a news source, with 50 percent of Gen Z and 44 percent of millennials reporting daily usage. By contrast, 43 percent of Boomers said that they never used social networks for news.

A 2024 study on news consumption among children in the United Kingdom found that 55 percent of 12 to 15 year olds used TikTok for news, making this the most popular social media platform among this demographic group. Instagram was most popular among 15 year olds, whilst 12 year olds were more engaged with news on YouTube than their older peers.

In Portugal, in the observed period, Facebook was the main social media and messaging platform when it comes to accessing news, selected by 35 percent of respondents. WhatsApp and Instagram were chosen by 23 and 21 percent of respondents, respectively. Ranking last, TikTok was used as a news platform by seven percent of those surveyed.

According to a survey conducted among social media users worldwide in early 2023, TikTok and Snapchat users were found to be paying more attention to personalities and influencers than to mainstream journalists when it came to news. This was in contrast with Twitter and Facebook, where conventional outlets and journalists were found to still be king.

A survey on online news consumption behavior conducted in India in 2023 revealed that YouTube was the leading platform for online news consumption as indicated by 93 percent of the respondents. Social media was the next most used platform among Indian online news consumers, followed by chat apps. It was worth noting that news publishers had yet to realize their market potential with only 45 percent of respondents using the apps and websites of these outlets to access the news.

A study held in the United States in early 2021 found that mainstream news outlets and journalists were the news source paid most attention to among social media news consumers, with 37 percent of Twitter users citing these as their main focus when getting news via the platform, and over 20 percent of Facebook and YouTube news users said the same. However, 18 percent of respondents using YouTube for news said that they paid most attention to internet personalities when finding news there, and 17 percent looked most at news content posted by ordinary people.

In 2024, 31 percent of respondents to a survey in the United States said that they used Facebook for news. Facebook remains the leading social media network for news consumption among U.S. consumers. In second place was YouTube, with 29 percent, marking a jump from the previous year.

A survey held in the United States in 2023 revealed that 40 percent of responding adults said that what they disliked most about getting news on social media was the fact that the news is inaccurate, an increase of nine percent from 2018. Other reasons given were low-quality news or other people's behavior. Social media news consumption is complex With inaccurate news being the main reason consumers dislike news via social networks, the issue of trust also comes into play. Whilst fake and manipulated content can circulate on any platform, social media platforms can exacerbate the matter, with written posts, video footage, and audio easily shared and disseminated at the click of a button. TikTok in particular, with its focus on short-form snappy content, ranked poorly in terms of trusted social networks - 50 percent of U.S. adults responding to a survey considered the platform very untrustworthy. What are the positives of news found on social media? Data from 2023 showed that 20 percent of adults in the United States who used social media to get news stated that convenience was their main reason for doing so. Speed and interaction with people were the two next most popular reasons for using social networking platforms as a source of news. Even so, the majority (more than a third) of respondents said they did not know why they liked getting news on social networks or did not answer. This speaks to the complex relationship the public now has with social media – its convenience, as well as its prevalence in users’ everyday lives, means that it can often be difficult to avoid using it. However, when it comes to news, users remain unsure.