59 percent of US adults get news from social media at least sometimes, according to Pew Research Center's survey of Aug. 24 to 30, 2026. Facebook (40 percent) and YouTube (34 percent) are where the largest shares of adults say they regularly get it.
The number I'd look at first isn't the 59 percent. It's X. Only 10 percent of all US adults regularly get news on X in 2026, yet 57 percent of the people who use X do, which puts it level with Facebook on that measure. Reach and habit are two different things, and this page keeps them apart. The figures come from Pew's social media and news fact sheet, built on a survey of 5,166 US adults.
The headline numbers at a glance
- 59 percent of US adults get news from social media at least sometimes (2026).
- 26 percent get news there often, 33 percent sometimes, 17 percent rarely and 23 percent never (2026).
- 40 percent regularly get news on Facebook and 34 percent on YouTube (2026).
- 23 percent regularly get news on Instagram and 20 percent on TikTok (2026).
- 88 percent get news from digital devices at least sometimes, and 63 percent from television (2026).
How often Americans see news in their feeds
Pew splits the answers four ways. Here's the 2026 row from the Pew fact sheet, as a share of all US adults.
| How often (2026) | Share of US adults (%) |
|---|---|
| Often | 26 |
| Sometimes | 33 |
| Rarely | 17 |
| Never | 23 |
The often group is the one I'd watch, because that's where social media is a routine rather than something people bump into. Here's how that group reads across the years compared.
| Year | Get news from social media often (% of US adults) |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 23 |
| 2025 | 21 |
| 2026 | 26 |
So the often group was lower in 2025 than in 2020, then rose in 2026. Don't draw a straight line through three points. Pew doesn't say the rise will carry on, and neither will I.
Site by site: 2023 against 2026
This is the table most people come looking for. Each number is the share of ALL US adults who say they regularly get news on that site, not the share of the site's own users. "Regularly get news" is Pew's wording, so that's the wording used here.
| Site | 2023 (%) | 2026 (%) |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | 40 | |
| YouTube | 26 | 34 |
| 16 | 23 | |
| TikTok | 14 | 20 |
| X (formerly Twitter) | 12 | 10 |
| 8 | 9 | |
| Nextdoor | 5 | 8 |
| 5 | 6 | |
| 3 | 5 |
Facebook went from 30 percent in 2023 to 40 percent in 2026: that's a rise of 10 points. TikTok went from 14 percent to 20 percent over the same years, a rise of 6 points. X is the only site in the table with a lower share in 2026 than in 2023. Further down the list, Pew puts Rumble and Truth Social at 2 percent each and Bluesky at 1 percent in 2026. For the wider picture of who uses each network at all, my round-up of social media stats for marketers covers that ground, and I've got separate pages on how people use Instagram and LinkedIn in 2026.
Share of each site's own users
Now flip the question. Instead of all Americans, take only the people on each site. The answers shift a lot, and they're the more useful ones if you're trying to work out what a platform is for.
- 57 percent of X users regularly get news there (2026).
- 57 percent of Facebook users regularly get news there (2026).
- 53 percent of TikTok users regularly get news there (2026).
- 46 percent of Instagram users regularly get news there (2026).
- 45 percent of Nextdoor users regularly get news there in 2026, up from 33 percent in 2025.
Nextdoor's the one I wouldn't have guessed. Pew calls it a community forum app, and almost half of its users now say they regularly get news on it. If you want a sense of how big X's audience is in the first place, I've written about how many people are on Twitter separately.
Where social sits next to devices, TV, radio and print
Pew's news platform fact sheet, from a survey of the same dates, puts this in context. 88 percent of US adults get news from digital devices like a smartphone, computer or tablet at least sometimes, and 63 percent get news from television at least sometimes. On that same "at least sometimes" bar, social media's 59 percent sits just under television.
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Radio and print are reported on a stricter bar: 12 percent of US adults often get news from radio, and 6 percent often get it from printed newspapers or magazines (2026). Don't line those up against the 59 percent. Often and at least sometimes aren't the same question. The fair comparison is the 26 percent who often get news from social media.
Three limits worth quoting with the numbers
Pew doesn't say these people trust what they see, or that it's accurate. There's nothing here about the UK or anywhere else outside the US. And "regularly get news" is the person's own answer about their habits, not a measure of what's on their screen.
What this means for where you post
My verdict: for American audiences, social feeds are a normal place to meet news now, not a fringe one. Facebook and YouTube hold the biggest shares of all adults in 2026, so that's where the reach sits. X is different: small by reach, but more than half of the people there say they use it for news. So read each site two ways, by how many adults it reaches and by what its own users go there for. Don't treat either as proof that anyone will see your post, because Pew didn't measure that. It's a fair map of attention. It isn't a forecast of your results.
Quick answers
Do most Americans get news from social media?
Yes, at least some of the time. Pew's Aug. 24 to 30, 2026 survey puts it at 59 percent of US adults, with 23 percent saying they never do.
Which site is the biggest for news?
Facebook. 40 percent of US adults regularly get news there in 2026, followed by YouTube at 34 percent, per Pew.
Is TikTok growing as a news source?
On Pew's figures, yes so far. 14 percent of US adults regularly got news on TikTok in 2023 and 20 percent in 2026.
Do people trust the news they see on social media?
These fact sheets don't say. Pew asked where people get news, and that's all these figures cover.
