Social Media as a News Source

Social media is big in the news business. That’s not all that newsworthy in itself. However, data released by the Pew Research Center allows a closer glimpse at how important sites like Facebook, YouTube or Twitter have become.

Facebook is by far the largest player in the social media realm, reaching 67 percent of U.S. adults, as the infographic by Statista illustrates. Two-thirds of Facebook users get their news on-site, which in turn amounts to a staggering 44 percent of the general population.

YouTube’s overall usage lies at 48 percent of U.S. adults. But only about a fifth of its users get their news fix there, which amounts to 10 percent of the adult population. Twitter is frequented by 16 percent of U.S. adults of which a pretty large proportion use it for news.

This chart was published by FIPP