Report: 67 Percent of Americans Get News Through Social Media

67 percent of Americans claim to have received their news through social media at some point, according to a report.

Just under 5,000 people were surveyed by Pew Research for the report.

“That overall percentage is only up slightly from 62 percent in 2016, in the run-up to the November election. But among specific demographics, using social media for news has increased: 74 percent of non-white U.S. adults now get news from social media, up from 64 percent of that group who got news that way in 2016,” reported NiemanLab in an article covering the survey. “Fifty-five percent of Americans 50 and older say they’ve gotten news from social media, up from 45 percent.”

According to the report, Twitter was the most dominant platform for consuming news, with 74 percent of users claiming to get their news there, up 15 percent from last year.

This was followed by Reddit and Facebook at 68 percent, Tumblr at 39 percent, YouTube at 32 percent, and Snapchat at 29 percent.

In NiemanLab’s report, they note that the 15 percent rise in users who cite Twitter as their news source could be attributed to “President and tweeter-in-chief Donald Trump, who has taken to making official U.S. policy statements there.”

Snapchat’s news-consuming userbase was also revealed to be the youngest, while both Snapchat and Instagram had the “largest share of non-white users.”

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all had the largest share of white users.

In June, it was also reported that 85 percent of Americans use mobile devices to access news, a number which is being driven up by older citizens.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington and Gab @Nash, or like his page at Facebook.