New Pew data: More Americans are getting news on Facebook and Twitter
Facebook and Twitter users across all demographics are increasingly using the social networks as news sources, though they are seeking out different types of news content on each platform, according to a study out Tuesday …
Context & Ripple Effects
This July 2015 Pew study is an early marker in a series the center would keep extending: within a year it measured 62% of US adults getting news on social media, with two-thirds of Facebook users doing so (66% of Facebook users getting news there).
The trajectory kept steepening — by late 2017 Pew found more than half of Americans aged 50+ getting news socially and 74% of Twitter users using the site for news (up 15 points year over year) — which makes this 2015 snapshot the baseline from which Facebook and Twitter became default news infrastructure rather than referral channels.
First-order effects
- Publishers distributing on both platforms now face two distinct editorial products, since Pew finds users seek different content types on each — the same story cannot be packaged identically for a feed optimized for sharing and one built around real-time conversation.
- Newsrooms' audience metrics begin blending social reach into their core counts, making Facebook and Twitter algorithm changes directly material to traffic rather than auxiliary.
Second-order effects
- As multi-platform news diets grow — Pew later measured US adults getting news from two or more social sites rising from 15% in 2013 to 26% (26% of US adults by 2017) — the platforms start competing for the same habitual news check, pressuring each to add news-friendly features to retain session time.
- Advertisers gain a measurable news-adjacent audience inside social feeds, shifting budget away from publisher-owned inventory toward the platforms that now intermediate it.
Third-order effects
- The pattern holds long enough to reverse unevenly: by 2021 Pew measured regular Facebook news use falling from 54% to 47% while TikTok's rose (29% of US TikTok users regularly getting news), suggesting social news consumption persists but migrates across platforms with each user generation.
- Structurally, news discovery consolidates around whichever platform owns the habit — with half of Facebook news users getting news nowhere else socially (50% via Facebook alone) — concentrating gatekeeping power over journalism in a small set of companies whose incentives are engagement, not editorial.
The trend: Social media platforms have been absorbing news distribution from publishers since at least 2015, with each successive Pew wave showing deeper penetration, broader demographics, and — eventually — migration to newer platforms.