Social Media and News Fact Sheet
September 26, 2025
Digital sources have become an important part of Americans’ news diets – with social media playing a crucial role, particularly for younger adults. Overall, about half of U.S. adults (53%) say they at least sometimes get news from social media, roughly stable over the last few years.
Facebook and YouTube outpace all other social media sites as places where Americans regularly get news: 38% of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on Facebook, and 35% say the same about YouTube.
Smaller shares of Americans regularly get news on Instagram (20%), TikTok (20%) or X, formerly known as Twitter (12%). Fewer say they get news on Reddit (9%), Nextdoor (6%), WhatsApp (5%), Threads (3%), Rumble (2%), Truth Social (2%) and Bluesky (2%).
News Note: The other response option was “No, don’t regularly get news on this.” Only respondents who indicated that they use each site were asked if they regularly get news on it. Refer to our detailed tables for the underlying data.
Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted Aug. 18-24, 2025.
Some social media sites – despite having relatively small overall audiences – stand out as destinations for news among many of their users. For example, 57% of X users get news there, as do a similar share of users (55%) on Truth Social, the site owned by President Donald Trump’s media and technology company. On the other hand, only 15% of WhatsApp users regularly get news on that platform.
Just over half of TikTok users (55%) say they regularly get news on the site, up from 22% in 2020. The shares of users who get news on some other sites, such as YouTube and Instagram, also have risen.
Note: The other response option was “No, don’t regularly get news on this.” Only respondents who indicated that they use each site were asked if they regularly get news on it. Social media sites are shown left to right in descending order by the share of U.S. adults who regularly get news there. Refer to our detailed tables for the underlying data.
Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted Aug. 18-24, 2025
Who consumes news on each social media site?
The people who regularly get news on different social media sites often differ by gender, age and other factors. For example, women are more likely to regularly get news from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, while men are more likely to say they get it from YouTube, X and Reddit. Other patterns are unique to individual sites.
Younger people are more likely to be regular news consumers on TikTok, Instagram, Reddit and X. Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans are more likely than White Americans to regularly get news from YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp. In addition, those without a college degree are more likely than those with a college degree to get news from Facebook and TikTok.
Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say they get news from Instagram, TikTok and Reddit. Roughly equal shares of each party, though, say they regularly get news from YouTube.
(Read the Appendix for data on the demographic profiles and party identification of regular social media news consumers in the United States.)
