In what surely is a sign of the times, the number of American adults getting at least some of their news from social media has grown to 67%, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in August with 5,000 adults.
While the jump in those getting news from social in 2016 to those doing so in 2017 is a modest 5%, other increases are notable.
Look at the upper chart or the one listing the social platforms where Americans receive their news and note the jump in those who said they get news from Twitter: in 2016, 59% said they received news from the birded platform, that figure rose to 74% in 2017.
Want a shock? In the same charts look at the jump in those getting news from YouTube in 2017. YouTube for news? Pizza for breakfast? Even Snapchat can boast a healthy increase in news gatherers on its platform in 2017.
Also of interest to marketers and communicators: there are “substantial increases among Americans who are older, less educated, and nonwhite,” Pew says. These groups are powering the growth in social news gathering.
For the first time in the Pew surveys, more than half (55%) of Americans ages 50 or older said they get news on social. That’s up 10% from 2016. Pew also says 74% of non-whites get news on social, up 10% from 2016. And social media use for news also rose among those with less than a bachelor’s degree, up 9% from 60% in 2016. Conversely, those with at least a college degree used social slightly less in 2017 for news gathering than they did in 2016.
