In 2004, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg along with his common roommates at Harvard. Over the next 20 years, social media has continuously expanded towards what it is today, and it’s something that is still growing. YouTube was released in 2005, Twitter, now known as X, was released in 2006, Instagram in 2010, Snapchat in 2011, and TikTok in 2016.
Social media emphasizes expression and that parameter holds very few boundaries, outside of the list of community guidelines maintained by each of these sites. The idea behind social media is that anybody in the world can share whatever they want with the rest of the world, and its increase in popularity over the last two decades has led to many news sources developing a presence on social media.
In a survey conducted from July 15th to August 4th of this year, it was found that 72% of U.S. adults get their news via social media at least rarely, with 25% of these adults getting their news from social media very often. These numbers are up slightly comparatively to the past few years, and they are likely to continue to rise as the individuals who were born during the social media era grow older.
Out of the 12 most commonly used social media platforms, nine have seen an increase in the percentage of adults using them for news regularly over the past four years that this survey has been conducted. Two of these nine sources, being Truth Social and Rumble, had a notable percentage of adults receiving news there regularly for the first time this year. One source, being LinkedIn, has remained stagnant in the news consumption of American adults since 2020.
Facebook and X are the only two sites that have seen a decline since 2020. The decline of X could be attributed to the rebranding and overall changes that were developed by Elon Musk when he purchased the brand in 2022. Facebook’s decline can be generally attributed to its decline in engagement from Gen Z.
As technology continues to grow, the prominence of social media as a news source for the general public is projected to increase more and more as time goes on.
