Social media has become such an important aspect of our daily lives. As it continues to grow and expand, its no surprise that it also changes the way our community consumes and views the news.
A recent study released by Pew Research shows that out of the 64% of American adults who use Facebook, nearly half, or 30%, uses the network as a daily source for news. It is also noted that when the users see the news, it is usually on accident. More than 78% of Facebook users claim to see news when on Facebook for other reasons. And only 34% of Facebook news consumers actually “like” or follow a news organization, which shows that most of the news must be coming from their own personal friends.
It was also presented that 10% of U.S. adults use YouTube for news, 8% use Twitter, and a measly 2% prefer using Reddit. Furthermore, the study showed that each social platform had significantly different audiences. For example, LinkedIn news consumers were the most educated and consisted of mainly college students. On the other hand, Twitter’s news consumers were significantly younger than all the other consumers.
However, keep in consideration that although these percentages seem massive when compared to the social network’s overall user base, they are still a small portion of the entire U.S. adult population. But, as the use of social networking continues to grow among our society, we can expect a continuous rise in the use of social media to receive the news.
Photo Credit: Scott Beale
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