Katerina Eva Matsa

Most Americans see freedom of the press – protected by the First Amendment to the U.S.

Americans’ engagement with others is not one-dimensional. Rather than falling along a single spectrum, U.S. adults sort into four distinct groups that reflect different patterns of participation:

Americans today describe a complicated relationship with the news.

In the heat of the 2024 election, news influencers seemed to be everywhere.

Social media platforms are an important part of the American news diet: Half of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from social media in general. But specific platforms differ widely in structure, content and culture. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that the ways in which Americans encounter news on four major platforms—TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram – vary widely. Key findings from this study include:

A small but growing share of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on TikTok. This is in contrast with many other social media sites, where news consumption has either declined or stayed about the same in recent years. In just three years, the share of U.S. adults who say they regularly get news from TikTok has more than quadrupled, from 3 percent in 2020 to 14 percent in 2023. TikTok, primarily known for short-form video sharing, has become especially popular among teens—two-thirds of whom report ever using the platform—as well as young adults. More of TikTok’s U.S.

In recent years, several new options have emerged in the social media universe, many of which explicitly present themselves as alternatives to more established social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – especially by opposing free speech restrictions they say are rife at those sites. These newer sites have created a small but satisfied community of news consumers, many of whom say one of the major reasons they are there is to stay informed about current events.

As social media and technology companies face criticism for not doing enough to stem the flow of misleading information on their platforms, a sizable portion of Americans continue to turn to these sites for news. A little under half (48%) of U.S.

About two-thirds of American adults (68%) say they at least occasionally get news on social media, about the same share as at this time in 2017, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Many of these consumers, however, are skeptical of the information they see there: A majority (57%) say they expect the news they see on social media to be largely inaccurate. Still, most social media news consumers say getting news this way has made little difference in their understanding of current events, and more say it has helped than confused them (36% compared with 15%).

Mobile devices have become one of the most common ways Americans get news, outpacing desktop or laptop computers. Roughly six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) often get news on a mobile device, 19 percentage points higher than the 39% who often get news on a desktop or laptop computer, according to a Pew Research Center survey.