About 40% of Americans under the age of 30 get News from Social Media Influencers

Most Americans regularly get their news from social media influencers, including 21% of all adults and 37% of 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed, according to a new Pew Research Center report. And with Monday’s news that the Associated Press is laying off 8% of its workforce, the Pew report is the latest sign that news consumption in the US will continue to shift away from traditional institutions in the coming years.

The study looked at influencers with more than 100,000 followers in a given area, narrowing down to 2,058 news influencers on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and X. How does Pew define influencers? “They are individuals who have a large following on social media and often post about news or political or social issues.” However, the survey does not include any account that was part of an official news organization. Politicians are also excluded.

From there, the study looked at the social media habits of 10,658 Americans from July 15 to Aug. 4, 2024, and their use of content from 2,058 influencers with a large enough following identified on social media. Big names include right-wingers like Benny Johnson, Dinesh D’Souza, Matt Walsh, Jack Posobiec, and Charlie Kirk, while liberals include people like Brian Tyler Cohen, Ashley Judd, and Heather Cox Richardson.

85% of the biggest influencers in the study attended X, though it will be interesting to see how those numbers compare to the state of the media a year from now. After the Nov. 5 presidential election, there was a massive exodus of liberals and bigots fed up with X owner Elon Musk and the way he turned the site into a safe haven for far-right extremism.

The study found that 50% of the most popular influencers have a presence on Instagram, which is the second most popular platform for news influencers. The rest of the list includes YouTube (44%), Facebook (32%), Threads (30%), TikTok (27%), LinkedIn (12%), Rumble (11%) , Telegram 7%), Truth Social 5%), Gettr (4%), Gab (4%), and BitChute (less than 1%). There were no influencers on Bluesky, which could be interesting to watch a year from now if Pew repeats the lesson.

The gender breakdown in the report is very interesting. About 63% of the influencers were male, while 30% of the influencers were female, and the remainder were non-binary or gender undecided by the researchers. TikTok had the highest percentage of female influencers at 45% but men still made up the largest percentage of the largest accounts at 50%. The biggest gender gap was on YouTube, where 68% of influencers were male and only 28% were female.

There were also significant differences between generations. While 21% of US adults overall say they often get news from social media influencers, 18-29 year olds top the list at 37%, and 26% of 30-49 year olds say the same. Only 15% of Americans aged 50-64 say they regularly get news from influencers, while 7% of those 65+ report the same.

27% of the influencers in the study were on the right, according to their bios, and 21% were on the left, with the rest showing no obvious political leanings. TikTok is the only site where left-leaning influencers clearly make up the largest percentage of influencers at 28% compared to 25% who were right-leaning on the platform.

About 77% of influencers had no previous relationship with a news organization and 23% had been employed by a traditional media company in some way, according to Pew. And it’s those 23% who are most likely to openly identify with politics.