Survey: 47% of US Facebook users regularly get news on the platform, down from 54% in 2020; 29% of US TikTok users regularly get news from the app, up from 22%

More than half of Twitter user get news on the site regularly — To better examine the ways Americans get news in a digital age …

Pew Research Center 2021-09-21

Context & Ripple Effects

Pew has tracked this question for years, and the arc is now unmistakable: back in 2016, two-thirds of US Facebook users got news on the platform, and by January this year Pew's survey of 9,220 adults still put regular Facebook news use at 36% of all adults — the largest single social source in the field.

Today's numbers mark a reversal at both ends: the share of Facebook users who regularly get news there has slipped from 54% to 47%, while TikTok's news-using share climbed from 22% to 29%. Twitter remains the most news-saturated platform, with more than half of its users getting news there regularly. The story is less that people are abandoning social news than that the center of gravity is migrating off the incumbent.

First-order effects

Facebook's news reach is eroding on its own turf — a smaller share of its user base treats it as a news destination, which directly shrinks the audience publishers and advertisers can be sold against on the platform.
TikTok's rise as a news source gives it a growing claim to the same attention inventory, putting it in direct competition with Facebook for habitual news check-ins among younger users.

Second-order effects

Publishers' platform strategies face pressure to rebalance: with Facebook's news share falling while multi-site news habits grow — Pew found users on two or more sites rising steadily since 2013 — distribution bets concentrated on one feed become riskier than spreading across TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter.
Advertisers chasing news-adjacent audiences will follow the shift, forcing Facebook to defend news engagement or cede that inventory to TikTok, whose news-user share is still climbing.

Third-order effects

If the five-year slide continues — from 66% of Facebook users in 2016 to 47% today — no single platform may again hold the gatekeeper position over social news distribution, fragmenting the leverage platforms have historically held over publishers.
The pattern points toward news discovery becoming an age-segmented market, where each cohort defaults to a different app, weakening any single platform's bargaining power with media companies and regulators alike.

The trend: Social news consumption is fragmenting away from Facebook toward short-video and real-time platforms, with each generational cohort consolidating around a different default app.

Discussion

@jeffjarvis Jeff Jarvis on x
I hate this poll question. I “get” news from many places: FB, Twitter, colleagues, email. The news I then go to is usually on news sites. These polls *never* define what people have in mind when they “get news.” https://twitter.com/...
@pewresearch @pewresearch on x
Some social media sites stand out for being more “newsy” even if their total audience is relatively small. Twitter, for example, is used by 23% of U.S. adults, but more than half of those users (55%) get news on the site regularly. https://www.pewresearch.org/ ... https://twitter…
@jbenton Joshua Benton on x
New by me —> As @Facebook tries to knock the journalism off its platform, its users are doing the same. A healthy chunk of Facebook users say they don't get much news there any more — an outcome to be both expected and desired. https://www.niemanlab.org/...
@dahliazahava Polemic Princess on x
Boomers and Gen X are soooo stupid for getting their news from Facebook lol. Hey did you see this new amazing TikTok that tells you that blinking is a sign of trauma 😳
@joanna_detz Joanna Detz on x
I, for one, welcome the decoupling of journalism from Facebook's trough of disinformation. https://www.niemanlab.org/...
@pewresearch @pewresearch on x
Younger adults (ages 18-29) are far more likely to regularly get news on both Snapchat and TikTok than other age groups. https://www.pewresearch.org/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@pewresearch @pewresearch on x
48% of Americans say they get news from social media “often” or “sometimes,” a 5 percentage point decline compared with 2020. https://www.pewresearch.org/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@gottfriedjeff Jeff Gottfried on x
⚡️NEW DATA⚡️Take a look at the demographic profiles of those who regularly get news on each social media site. https://www.pewresearch.org/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@pewresearch @pewresearch on x
NEW: As social media and technology companies face criticism for not doing enough to stem the flow of misleading information on their platforms, a sizable portion of Americans continue to turn to these sites for news. https://www.pewresearch.org/ ...
@pewjournalism @pewjournalism on x
🚨NEW🚨 As social media companies struggle with misinformation on their platforms, a sizable portion of Americans continue to turn to these sites for news. https://www.pewresearch.org/ ... https://twitter.com/...

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