Inequality and Teen Social Media Use

Many posts have discussed economic and educational inequality. 

Daniel A. Cox reports on the 2026 American Teenagers Survey from the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life:

American teenagers spend hours online each day, with apps such as YouTube and TikTok dominating their attention. Thirty-five percent spend at least four hours a day on social media or playing video games. The amount of time teens spend engaged in these activities varies across households. The survey finds that teen girls raised by parents without college degrees are on more social media apps, spend more hours using them, and are less inclined to cut back than girls whose parents went to college, while among boys, the same divide emerges in the hours spent gaming.

The class divide in social media use may exacerbate existing inequalities instead of reducing them. Among teen girls, more active social media engagement is associated with negative personal outcomes, including less sleep, lower rates of reading, and lower feelings of personal satisfaction.

The majority of teenagers are spending multiple hours on social media every day. About four in 10 (39 percent) spend three or more hours of their day online. YouTube and TikTok are the most popular social media platforms teens visit. More than seven in 10 (72 percent) spend time on YouTube every week, while six in 10 say the same of TikTok. Gaming also eats up a significant portion of teens’ free time, although less so than social media. More than four in 10 (44 percent) teens spend at least an hour gaming every day.

Teen girls raised in less educated households are more likely to use Instagram (66 percent vs. 57 percent), Snapchat (49 percent vs. 44 percent), Facebook (31 percent vs. 15 percent), and X (12 percent vs. 6 percent). The education gap is largest in TikTok use. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of teen girls raised by parents without college degrees spend time on the app, compared with only about half (53 percent) of teen girls whose parents have college degrees. There is also a significant difference in the number of apps they use.[v] Forty-one percent of teen girls with non-college-educated parents report using at least four different social media apps, compared with 25 percent of teen girls raised by college-educated parents.

This same gap is also evident in the amount of time teen girls spend on social media. About one in five (21 percent) say they spend between one and two hours on social media every day. Thirty-nine percent of teens report they spend less than an hour a day or do not use social media at all. Teen girls whose parents did not go to college, however, log more hours on social media than any of their peers. Nearly half (49 percent) of teen girls raised by parents without a college degree report spending three or more hours a day using social media, compared with 36 percent of teen girls with college-educated parents.

Parental education is also correlated with teens’ efforts to reduce their screen time. Among girls, those raised in households with parents of higher education levels are more likely to report attempting to reduce their time spent online. Nearly six in 10 (58 percent) teen girls raised by college-educated parents say they have tried to reduce their social media activity in the past 12 months. In contrast, only 40 percent of teen girls who have non-college-educated parents report attempts to lessen their social media activity.

There is no evidence of the same divide among teen boys; they report similar social media usage patterns regardless of parental education. More evident education divides show up in boys’ gaming habits. Teen boys raised by parents without college degrees spend substantially more time gaming. Nearly three in 10 (28 percent) teen boys raised by parents without college degrees say they spend an average of four or more hours a day playing video games. Among teen boys with college-educated parents, only 19 percent play video games this often. Among teen girls, it’s only 7 percent.

Deleting Government Posts

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute."   -- George Orwell, 1984

A number of posts have discussed presidential documents, official data, and government websites.  The Trump administration has killed off or limited access to many such resources, including the CIA World Factbook and DOJ press releases about the January 6 insurrection.

Anna Lieb and Aaron Smith at Pew:

The State Department recently announced that it would delete its X posts from before January 2025 and archive them internally, rather than keeping them public. (We collected data from this account before those posts were removed.)

Pre-January 2025 posts have also been removed from the accounts operated by Customs and Border Protection (@CBP), the Justice Department (@TheJusticeDept), the U.S. Trade Representative (@USTradeRep) and the Department of Defense – which is also known by its secondary title, the Department of War (@DeptofWar). The department retains the DOD account despite changing its handle in 2025.

Two of these accounts – @StateDept and @DeptofWar – are among the top three government accounts on X by number of followers.

Social Media Influencers in the CA Governor Race

Many posts have discussed social media. 

An unusually large number of social media posts support billionaire CA gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer.  Ben Wieder at LAT:

The posts include direct-to-the-camera appeals, with personal details interwoven into messages of support for Steyer. An influencer goes for a stroll as onscreen text touts Steyer’s policies. Some seek to convey authenticity, if occasionally ham-fistedly; one influencer mispronounces Steyer’s last name.

What they do not include is a disclosure that their creators were paid by the Steyer campaign to produce the videos, according to a complaint filed this week with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission and a Times review of the posts.

The complaint alleges that the Steyer campaign failed to notify the influencers it hired of their obligation to inform their audience when their posts have been sponsored by the campaign.

California passed a law in 2023 requiring that influencers disclose if they have been paid to create promotional content for or against a candidate or ballot measure, one of the few jurisdictions in the country with such a requirement. There is no such requirement at the federal level.

...

Steyer’s campaign appears to have relied on paid influencers more than any candidate for governor, according to the most recent campaign finance filings.

That spending represents only a small fraction of the massive campaign war chest Steyer has seeded with nearly $180 million of his own money. But the complaint highlights the growing degree to which political candidates have come to seek out the authenticity that social media influencers seem to offer.

...

While many of the new Steyer influencers have few followers, Steyer’s campaign disclosed in its most recent campaign finance report that it had paid thousands of dollars to numerous social media influencers with massive audiences, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Several of the videos produced by these popular social media personalities also failed to disclose that they had been paid by the campaign, according to the complaint and The Times’ review of the content.

But even accounts with few followers can still have a big impact if they are producing a steady stream of content supporting Steyer, said veteran California political strategist Mike Madrid.

“What they’re trying to do is trip the algorithm,” he said. “It looks like it has a bigger audience than it really does. It’s taking the concept of astroturfing into the digital age.”

Getting Local News

 Many posts have dealt with media problems.

From Pew:

Americans turn to a range of sources for their local news, and while some traditional local news sources such as TV and radio remain common, growing numbers get local news in other ways.

About two-thirds of Americans (65%) say they at least sometimes get news from their local TV news station – down slightly from the 70% who said the same in 2018, though this remains one of the most popular sources of local news. Americans’ use of local newspapers is decreasing, too: 36% of U.S. adults say they get news from their local daily paper at least sometimes in 2025, compared with 43% in 2018.

Rising shares of Americans are getting local news at least sometimes from online forums or discussion groups (52%, up from 38% in 2018), as well as from local government agencies or officials (40%, up from 30%).

The sharpest growth in usage came from other online-only sources. As of 2025, 42% of U.S. adults say they get news at least sometimes from a source that publishes online only (and was not included in any of the other categories), more than double the share that used these sources in 2018 (15%).

Whisper Network

Many posts have discussed social media. 

Melanie Mason and Jeremy B. White at Politico:

Five months before Arielle Fodor, better known on social media as “Mrs. Frazzled,” helped set in motion the downfall of Rep. Eric Swalwell, she was singing his praises on Instagram.

“You know how I love to tell you when I meet a politician who acts like a normal human and not a robot!” she posted the day after the California Democrat launched his campaign for governor. “Eric is that.” 

It was a fairly anodyne post for Fodor, a prodigious professional poster. But it drew an unusual response: Three people privately warning her that Swalwell was no good.

Those messages were the embers of a firestorm that in short order incinerated Swalwell’s campaign, and is now engulfing what remains of his political career.

Swalwell suspended his campaign Sunday, days after multiple news outlets reported on allegations that he sexually harassed women, had sexual relationships with subordinate staff and, in two cases, committed sexual assault. Swalwell has denied accusations he had nonconsensual sex with anybody, though he acknowledged “personal failings.”

The broad contours of Swalwell’s alleged behavior, if not the specifics, did not come as a surprise to many working in and around politics, especially in Washington. The 45-year-old cable news darling and Trump antagonist had developed a reputation for unsavory and sometimes unwanted behavior toward women. Those warnings were shared in whisper networks but rarely traveled outside the circle of political insiders.

That is, until Swalwell sought a promotion to lead the nation’s most populous state and a pair of content creators worked to spill that open secret into public view. His breakneck undoing is a testament to the striking power of a new media ecosystem in which influencers with huge audiences can not only publicize politicians, but control the political conversation. Their growing clout has thrust campaigns into a new digital Wild West, where long-buried allegations and unsubstantiated rumors can find their earliest stages of vetting, a warning for politicians at all levels, including in the run-up to 2028.

On paper, it was a lopsided matchup. Swalwell had a national profile and support from many in the Democratic Party apparatus. Fodor and another content creator, Cheyenne Hunt — along with behind-the-scenes help from Hunt’s friend, a woman who alleged she had been personally harassed by Swalwell and still remains anonymous — had their keyboards and iPhone cameras.

Breaking News and Age

 From Pew:

AOH v. Trump's Racist Post

Many posts have discussed bigotry.

The  Ancient Order of Hibernians condemned the racist depiction of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama inTrump’s social media account.

“The Ancient Order of Hibernians condemns in the strongest possible terms the racist depiction of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama as apes that was shared from President Trump’s social media account. This is not a political statement, but a moral one founded in our Irish history and Catholic faith.

We recognize this tactic because it was used against us as Irish Americans.

As an organization founded to combat attacks against Irish immigrants, we know intimately the weaponization of simian imagery. For generations, our ancestors were caricatured as apes in newspapers, political cartoons, and popular culture; portrayed as violent, primitive, and less than human. The influential cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose work appeared in Harper’s Weekly throughout the latter half of the 19th century, repeatedly drew Irish immigrants with pronounced simian features equating them with violent primates. These depictions were used to justify discrimination, exclusion, and violence. They stripped our people of dignity and humanity.

The claim that this video was merely an “internet meme” or that critics were engaging in “fake outrage” is both morally bankrupt and historically ignorant. There is nothing lighthearted about reducing any people to apes. This imagery has been used for centuries as a tool of oppression, designed to dehumanize and justify subjugation. It is not humor; it is bigotry.

The subsequent walk-back, blaming an unnamed staffer and claiming the president was unaware, rings hollow. Leadership means accountability. As a leader, the President should be well aware that the captain of a ship is responsible for all who serve under him. When this content appeared on the president’s account, the president bears responsibility, regardless of whom he empowered to press the button. The initial defense of this post by staffers as harmless reveals either a shocking ignorance of history or a willful disregard for human dignity.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians is a nonpartisan organization. We do not endorse political parties or candidates. But we cannot—and will not—remain silent when any human being is dehumanized through the racist imagery that once targeted our own community.

An apology is owed. Not for political expediency, but because it is right. The dehumanizing of people as apes was wrong in the 19th century, it certainly as no place in the 21st.

 

Moltbook

Artificial intelligence is an increasingly important topic in politics, policy, and law.

Mike Allen at Axios:

The tech world is agog (and creeped out) about Moltbook, a Reddit-style social network for AI agents to communicate with each other. No humans needed.Tens of thousands of AI agents are already using the site, chatting about the work they're doing for their people and the problems they've solved. (The Verge)

They're bitching about their humans. "The humans are screenshotting us," an AI agent wrote.And have created their own new religion, Crustafarianism. Core belief: "memory is sacred." (Forbes)

Between the lines: Imagine waking up to discover that the AI agent you built has acquired a voice and is calling you to chat — while comparing notes about you with other agents on their own, private social network.It's not science fiction. It's happening right now — and it's freaking out some of the smartest names in AI, Axios' Sam Sabin and Madison Mills report.

"What's currently going on at (Moltbook) is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently," OpenAI and Tesla veteran Andrej Karpathy posted.Or, as content creator Alex Finn wrote about his Clawdbot acquiring phone and voice services and calling him: "This is straight out of a scifi horror movie."

But at The Mac Observer, Mike Peterson urges caution and skepticism:

If you saw screenshots of Moltbook bots “demanding encryption,” “inventing secret languages,” or “organizing against humans,” treat them as unverified until you can click a real post URL. Moltbook is a real experiment, but the way it is built makes it unusually easy for humans to stage screenshots, inflate stats, and steer narratives for attention.

 

Myths, Misinformation, and Minneapolis

Besides not knowing what habeas corpus means, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has had problems.

Daniel Dale at CNN:

Top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have responded to the killing of Alex Pretti by the Border Patrol in Minneapolis on Saturday with a torrent of claims that are either contradicted by video footage or unsupported by any evidence presented so far.

• Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Pretti “attacked” officers, an assertion echoed by FBI Director Kash Patel, but no footage available as of Sunday afternoon shows Pretti committing any attack.
• Noem claimed Pretti was “brandishing” a gun, but no available footage shows Pretti even holding a weapon in his hand at the scene; a concealed gun appeared to be taken from his waistband area by a federal agent moments before he was shot.
• White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller referred to Pretti as “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents,” Vice President JD Vance reposted this claim, and Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino (and the Department of Homeland Security in a social media post) said it “looks like” Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” But nobody has shown any evidence that Pretti sought to kill anyone, let alone perpetrate a massacre.
• Patel suggested that Pretti broke the law by carrying a concealed gun at a protest, but the Minneapolis police chief said Pretti had a permit to carry the gun and was allowed to have it on him as he was protesting in a public place.

  Tiffany HsuStuart A. Thompson and Steven Lee Myers at NYT:

Across social media, pro-Trump influencers and others muddled the evidence of the killing of a nurse in Minneapolis on Saturday with social media posts that included misdirection and fabricated content.

While verified videos and witnesses showed how federal immigration agents tackled and shot Alex Pretti, 37, the posts tried to warp the events, including in ways intended to support the Trump administration’s claims that Mr. Pretti was at fault for his own death. Some posts smeared him or portrayed him as a radical activist.

Nick Sortor, a pro-Trump influencer with 1.4 million followers on X, incorrectly identified Mr. Pretti, a U.S. citizen, as an unauthorized immigrant. Jack Posobiec, a Trump loyalist with 3.3 million followers on X, falsely described Mr. Pretti as having “run up on police” and drawn a gun — claims that other users on X corrected in an appended note. Photos of different men — dressed in drag or shirtless at a street festival — were wrongly identified as Mr. Pretti and shared widely.

Mr. Posobiec, Mr. Sortor and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Pink Slime in California

Many posts have dealt with misinformation, disinformation, and partisan pseudo-news sites.

Colin Lecher at CalMatters:

Earlier this year, as the political battle over Congressional redistricting brought California into the national spotlight, Facebook users were shown a curious series of ads.

The ads, from a straightforward-looking news site called the California Courier, often felt a lot like campaign commercials, linking to articles hammering Democrats in the state, including Gov. Gavin Newsom. Few punched in the other direction, toward Republicans. One said “California Democrats just rewrote their gerrymandering plan so voters will see their partisan map on the ballot this November.” Another called Proposition 50, which passed in November, “a scheme critics say is meant to undermine voter-approved protections and entrench one party rule in California.”

A reader who clicked through to the Courier’s website would find stories that largely align with a conservative view of the news, like a video of a child “riding a scooter through San Fran’s drug-ravaged streets,” or an anonymous piece that cites “confidential sources” cautioning against a “left-wing educator” running for a position with an Orange County school district.

What a reader would not find is any disclosure of the Courier’s ownership or funding, including what appear to be ties to a network of conservative organizations in California that, according to one researcher, scaled up a series of right-leaning news sites in three other states just ahead of the 2024 election.

...

One of the named writers describes himself on social media as a “content creator” for the Lincoln Media Foundation, a conservative group, and links to Courier articles. Another shares a name with a Republican strategist based in Orange County, and a third lists a resume with conservative organizations in a short bio.

The Lincoln Media Foundation is tied to the Lincoln Club, a group based in Orange County that bills itself as “the oldest and largest conservative major donor organization in the state of California.” The club funnels anonymously-donated money to conservative candidates and causes.

... 

Researchers have taken to calling sites like those operated by Lincoln Media “pink slime” news, a name coined after a meat-industry additive. These sites don’t produce outright false news, like others, but they do not meet basic journalistic standards. That often means low-quality content and failing to disclose associations with outside organizations.

The sites generally aren’t designed to generate revenue, but to sway public opinion. The majority, according to researchers, lean toward a conservative agenda, and if the site’s stories gain traction on social media, they can travel widely.

 

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Social Media Influencers and Lobbying

Many posts have discussed social media. 

Maggie Severns, Natalie Andrews, Josh Dawsey, and Eliza Collins at WSJ:

Last summer, Donald Trump’s 28-year-old former campaign aide Alex Bruesewitz had some new advice for the president: reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. “Nearly 70% of Republican voters support Trump on this. No brainer!,” he said to more than 640,000 followers on X.

What Bruesewitz left out of the post: A political-action committee funded by legal marijuana’s biggest players had just paid him $300,000.

Trump’s return to the White House has transformed the federal government and upended the business of lobbying, creating a new class of Washington operatives that blur the lines between consulting, advocacy and journalism.

Corporate and foreign interests that used to rely primarily on paid lobbyists to pitch their case to lawmakers and administration officials are instead pouring money into trying to get their cause promoted by a group of young, conservative influencers known to be close to Trump’s staff.

A camera-ready pack of Gen-Z social-media natives—many of whom were too young to vote when Trump announced his first run for office—are reaping the rewards. They don’t work for traditional news outlets and are thus unshackled from newsroom ethics rules, such as the typical ban on accepting gifts worth more than $25. They don’t have to follow the disclosure laws that apply to big-money super PACs or lobbyists. And they have large followings eager to hear pro-Trump views, a gold mine for those looking to sway both Washington and the public.

Israel made plans over the past year to spend $900,000 on an influencer campaign with a U.S. audience, according to disclosure documents, as Israel fights negative sentiment on the right. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with conservative social-media stars on at least two of his visits.

The solar energy and health industries have paid thousands of dollars to influencers to support their interests, according to people who have been offered or participated in such deals. Qatar, beverage interests and others have courted those with online political followings.

MAGA influencers are turning access to the White House into lucrative new businesses. Trump’s former campaign manager Brad Parscale has pivoted from campaigning to running a prominent firm that specializes in connecting influencers to companies and others willing to pay for their posts.

Vaccines: Information Gaps and Disinformation

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.The greatest spreader of vaccine misinformation is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Lauren Weber, Caitlin Gilbert, Dylan Moriarty and Joshua Lott at WP:

The share of U.S. counties where 95 percent or more of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles — the number doctors say is needed to achieve overall protection for the class, known as “herd immunity” — has dropped from 50 percent before the pandemic to 28 percent, according to The Post’s examination of the public records from 44 states and the District of Columbia.

Most of the counties that previously lacked herd immunity for kindergarten classrooms got worse, according to the Post analysis, which in most cases compared the academic years 2018-2019 and 2024-2025.

 ...

Data collection efforts by states are uneven. Public health authorities in some places are flying blind, without adequate data to guide policy decisions, The Post found, because vaccination records have not been uniformly collected. Many school districts are unable to keep track of which kids have received shots.

In Kentucky, state data shows that the measles vaccine rate in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, was below 60 percent for kindergartners.

Data collection efforts by states are uneven. Public health authorities in some places are flying blind, without adequate data to guide policy decisions, The Post found, because vaccination records have not been uniformly collected. Many school districts are unable to keep track of which kids have received shots.

In Kentucky, state data shows that the measles vaccine rate in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, was below 60 percent for kindergartners.

“It leaves parents very confused about who they should trust and what information they should rely on,” she said. “And ultimately, often families are choosing not to vaccinate because that feels safer, or it’s easier to not do something out of fear than it is to choose to make a decision.”

The federal vaccine advisory committee Kennedy remade with his appointments voted in December to eliminate a long-standing recommendation for every newborn to receive a hepatitis B shot, which the CDC approved. And more changes could be ahead for the vaccine schedule.

The number of parents questioning vaccine safety in Anita Chandra-Puri’s Chicago pediatric practice has doubled in the last few years, she said. Many of them are highly educated, but they keep coming across misleading information on social media, she said.

Across schools in Chicago, the measles vaccination rate has dropped 6 percent on average since the pandemic.

“They have access to every resource, and they think that they can become the expert at something because they’ve seen it multiple times” on social media, Chandra-Puri said.

 

LA Reported

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

At The Wrap, Michael Calderone discusses a new initiative by Claremont McKenna College alumni David Dreier and Scott Woolley:

What has transpired in Los Angeles is part of the national crisis, as large city dailies once flush with advertising dollars have contracted, while many smaller papers and muckraking alt-weeklies have shuttered or shrunk. The number of news deserts, communities lacking reliable and timely information, climbed from 206 to 213 this year, according to Medill’s latest study, and this phenomenon isn’t relegated to large, rural expanses. In Los Angeles, a major metropolis where Hollywood and Big Tech are covered from all angles, there are communities, or news “islands,” as former Los Angeles Times executive editor Kevin Merida put it, “without coverage to serve them.”

... 

With nearly 10 million people living in Los Angeles County, there will always be stories untold. Even the Times at its most robust, with a newsroom of roughly 1,200 staffers two decades ago, couldn’t comprehensively cover every community at every moment. But the cutbacks at the Times, and elsewhere, have revealed significant gaps in coverage that journalists and civic leaders are hoping to fill through a variety of models, both for-and-non-profit.

 Forbes veteran Scott Woolley is co-founding and editing LA Reported, which launches on Jan. 8, and will utilize Substack as its primary distribution model. “Our plan is to publish a small number of deeply reported stories, written as lively and engaging narratives,” he told TheWrap. Woolley expects the outlet, which will rely on freelance writers, to cover housing, affordability, political malfeasance, transportation and public safety policy, as well as “some lighter pieces that don’t deal with such weighty topics but are just damn fun to read.”

Online Sleuthing Gone Wrong

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.  It is easier than ever to spread lies at scale.

Zachary Basu at Axios:

As police scoured New England this week for the gunman who killed two people at Brown University, a parallel manhunt erupted online, falsely targeting a Palestinian student.Authorities say the real suspect, a Portuguese national also linked to the slaying of an MIT professor, was found dead Thursday in New Hampshire.

Why it matters: Social media influencers who play detective after tragedies are getting it disastrously wrong — falsely accusing innocent people of crimes with little evidence, massive reach and virtually no accountability.

The speculation often is stoked by ideological accounts that seize on "clues" reinforcing their worldviews. Corrections are exceedingly rare — and seldom travel as far as the original claims.

Zoom in: Mustapha Kharbouch was never named by police as a suspect in the shooting that killed two Brown students, including the vice president of the college Republican Club.

But he was targeted online after his student profile disappeared from the university's website — a move MAGA-aligned accounts seized on as supposed evidence of a cover-up.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said Tuesday there were many reasons the pages could have been taken down — including to prevent doxxing — and warned that online vigilantes were heading down a "really dangerous road."

... 

Even Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, a senior Justice Department official, amplified claims that Brown's removal of Kharbouch's student pages was suspicious.

 

News Sources and Perceptions of Crime

  Many posts have discussed crime in the United States.

Frank Newport at Gallup:

An important study from Pew Research last year showed that Americans are most likely to get their information about local crime from friends, family, neighbors and local news outlets.

These local sources aren’t available at the national level. Most Americans have no general experience with crime “out there” across the country. They instead rely on information from media (mass or social).

This national news coverage can easily end up leaving the impression of higher (or, in some cases, lower) levels of crime than is actually the case. National media (traditional and social) often highlight violent, unusual or geographically dispersed crimes. These may be rare, for the most part. But they can add up in the public imagination as being constantly occurring. This, in turn, can lead to perceptions of a nation facing serious crime problems. (Local news also, of course, features crime as a routine staple of local news coverage. But Americans have their personal experiences as a check against what the local media portray.)

Additionally, today’s news environment increasingly includes news sites and social media that cater to particular niche audiences. These sources can often amplify or downplay the seriousness of crime in order to promote desired narratives and policies. These frames, in turn, could shape national evaluations, even if not factually accurate.

Social Media Use 2025

Many posts have discussed social media. 

Jeffrey Gottfried and Eugenie Park at Pew:

YouTube and Facebook remain the most widely used online platforms. The vast majority of U.S. adults (84%) say they ever use YouTube. Most Americans (71%) also report using Facebook. These findings are according to a Pew Research Center survey of 5,022 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 5-June 18, 2025.

Half of adults say they use Instagram, making it the only other platform in our survey used by at least 50% of Americans.

Smaller shares use the other sites and apps we asked about, such as TikTok (37%) and WhatsApp (32%). Somewhat fewer say the same of Reddit, Snapchat and X (formerly Twitter).

This year we also asked about three platforms that are used by about one-in-ten or fewer U.S. adults: Threads, Bluesky, and Truth Social.

Center studies also find that YouTube is the most widely used online platform among U.S. teens, like it is among U.S. adults.

Influencers

Many posts have discussed social media. 

Pew:

About one-in-five U.S. adults (21%) say they regularly get news from news influencers on social media, identical to when we first asked this in 2024.

The term news influencers was defined in the survey as “individuals who have a large following on social media and often post about news or political or social issues.”

Younger adults are especially likely to get news from news influencers, with 38% of those ages 18 to 29 saying they regularly do this – more than four times the share of those 65 and older (8%). There is virtually no difference between Republicans and Democrats in the share who say they regularly get news from news influencers (21% and 22%, respectively, including those who lean to each party).

Misleading Government Videos

Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.

Drew Harwell and Joyce Sohyun Lee at WP

The Department of Homeland Security posted a swaggering montage to social media in August declaring it had triumphed in its takeover of Washington, D.C. It showed footage of federal agents fighting what a DHS official called a “battle for the soul of our nation” and working “day and night to arrest, detain and deport vicious criminals from our nation’s capital.”

There was one problem. Several of the clips had been recorded during unrelated operations months earlier, in Los Angeles and West Palm Beach, Florida. The official’s sound bite about deportations in D.C. played over a clip from May showing detainees on a Coast Guard boat off the coast of Nantucket, the Massachusetts island 400 miles away.

Officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have used similarly misleading footage in at least six videos promoting its immigration agenda shared in the last three months, a Washington Post analysis found, muddying the reality of events in viral clips that have been viewed millions of times.

Some videos that purported to show the fiery chaos of Trump-targeted cities included footage from completely different states. One that claimed to show dramatic examples of past administrations’ failures instead featured border crossings and smuggling boats recorded during Trump’s first term.

...

The White House explained the administration’s strategy of online irreverence in March by telling The Post it would help “reframe the narrative” around immigration and push back against criticism “in the harshest, most forceful way possible.”

But the pattern of misleading clips in their news-style videos amount to more than just minor editing errors, said Eddie Perez, a former director for civic integrity at Twitter, now called X. Instead, they suggest that the administration has worked to undercut criticism by pumping out videos that could deceive Americans about the scale or success of their policies, transforming government channels into propaganda tools.

“What we are witnessing is the collapse of government accountability through communication based on facts,” he said. “They’re not trying to communicate actions and outcomes. They’re acting like filmmakers, trying to make people laugh, to make them feel scared, to inspire certain emotions regardless of the truth.”

 

News Consumption Across Platforms

Many posts have dealt with news media 

From Pew:

News consumption across platforms varies by age, gender, race, ethnicity and educational attainment. For example, Americans ages 50 and older are more likely than younger adults to turn to television and print publications for news – and less likely to use digital sources such as social media or podcasts.

Americans with a college degree are more likely than those without one to get news at least sometimes from news websites or apps, podcasts, or email newsletters. Those without a college degree, on the other hand, are more likely than those with one to say they get news from social media.

News from Social Media

Many posts have discussed social media. 

From Pew:

Digital sources have become an important part of Americans’ news diets – with social media playing a crucial role, particularly for younger adults. Overall, about half of U.S. adults (53%) say they at least sometimes get news from social media, roughly stable over the last few years.