In some not-so-surprising news, two-thirds (67%) of Americans report that they get at least some of their news on social media – with two in ten doing so often. This interesting information came to us from the Pew Research Center in their article, “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017.”
This data is as of August 2017 and shows a modest increase since early 2016, when 62% of U.S. adults reported getting news from social media. The timing of that particular survey was right in the middle of the presidential primaries.
While a small increase overall, this growth is driven by more substantial increases among Americans who are older, less educated, and non-white. For the first time in the Center’s surveys, more than half (55%) of Americans ages 50 or older report getting news on social media sites.
Another interesting finding is that overall, Facebook outstrips all other social media sites as a source of news with YouTube reaching the second highest percentage.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
