A new survey of how people use social-media platforms not only rounds up the usual suspects–with almost no change in the usage of the top three services–but spotlights the progress of three newer platforms.
The Pew Research Center’s latest “Americans’ Social Media Use” report, published Thursday, shows Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram unchallenged as the big three networks: 84% of respondents reported that they ever use Google’s video-streaming hub, 71% said the same for Facebook, and 50% said that about Insta.
Those numbers reflected little change from the figures Pew published in January 2024: 83%, 68%, and 47%.
The rest of that Washington-based nonprofit’s report, however, reveals much more change. TikTok continued its climb, with 37% of respondents saying they ever use the short-form video platform–up from 33% in the earlier report, and much more than somebody might have expected when the Supreme Court upheld a law this January banning it from US app stores.
(President Trump then ignored that law’s provisions while TikTok owner ByteDance has continued to negotiate some sort of sale to US owners.)
A third Meta platform, WhatsApp, had 32% of survey respondents saying they ever use it, compared to 29% in January 2024. Reddit showed comparable growth, with its ever-use number rising to 26% from the previous figure of 22%. Snapchat, however, skidded to 25% from 27%, and X slipped to 21% from 22%.
The January 2024 report covered two networks left out of Thursday’s: Pinterest, in fourth place back then with 35% of respondents saying they ever use it, and Microsoft’s LinkedIn, at 30%. Pew said the change was an editorial decision based on survey design limits.
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Instead of those higher-profile platforms, this year’s study covered three alternatives to the former Twitter. Meta’s Threads saw use by 8% of respondents, Bluesky by 4%, and the Trump-owned Truth Social by 3%.
The Bluesky number stands out because you might expect it to be lower relative to Threads. That decentralized social platform only crossed the 40-million user mark this month, while Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted in August that Threads, originally spun out of Insta, had 400 million monthly active users.
Truth Social’s share also seems high given that it primarily exists as a stage for Trump to post such content as his suggestions Thursday that Democratic members of Congress be jailed or killed for reminding members of the military and the intelligence community of their duty to disobey illegal orders.
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Pew’s survey also assessed daily use of four of these platforms. Facebook led that list, with 52% of respondents saying it’s a daily habit, followed by YouTube at 48%, TikTok at 24%, and X at 10%.
Why those four? It was a balance between usage and political relevance.
“We wanted to make sure to include the two most widely used platforms in our previous work – YouTube and Facebook,” Jeffrey Gottfried, Pew’s associate director of research, said in a statement. “Additionally, we wanted to include some other platforms that have been part of broader discussions and debates around user bases and policies, so this year we decided to ask about TikTok and X (formerly Twitter).”
Pew had the research firm SSRS conduct this survey from a pool recruited from 18,800 households who each received mailings with monetary bait, per Pew’s description of the survey methodology: “two $1 bills (visible from the outside of the envelope) and a letter that asked a member of the household to complete the survey.” A total of 5,022 people completed the survey–2,349 online, 2,331 on paper, and 342 via phone.
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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
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