Media audiences are distributed across television, digital devices, social networks and creator-led channels. Recent Pew Research Center surveys describe how U.S. adults, teens and platform news consumers use these channels, while Nielsen’s 2024 Annual Marketing Report captures global marketers’ budget expectations and priorities.
Contents
- How Americans access news
- The leading social platforms
- Age differences in platform reach
- Who sees news on social networks
- Signals of trust, repetition and fatigue
- Teen audiences and platform change
- Where marketers planned to spend
How Americans access news
Digital devices are the broadest news gateway in the supplied U.S. survey results. In Pew Research Center’s 2024 News Platform Fact Sheet, 86% of U.S. adults said they get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet at least sometimes. The same survey found that 56% get news from digital devices often. These measures describe news access in 2024 and separate occasional or periodic exposure from a more frequent habit.
Television remained a major route to news: 64% of U.S. adults said they get news from television at least sometimes in the same Pew Research Center survey. Social media also reached a substantial share, with 54% saying they at least sometimes get news there, according to Pew Research Center’s Americans’ News Consumption Across Platforms.
Regular use of individual platforms provides a more specific view of the digital news environment.
| Platform | U.S. adults regularly getting news | Measurement period or comparison |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | 32% | 2024; 23% in 2020 |
| 33% | 2024 | |
| TikTok | 17% | 2024; 3% in 2020 |
Source: Pew Research Center, 5 Facts About Americans and YouTube and Americans’ News Consumption Across Platforms. The YouTube share rose from 23% in 2020 to 32% in 2024. TikTok’s share rose from 3% in 2020 to 17% in 2024. Those are changes in reported regular news use across the stated years, not forecasts.
The leading social platforms
Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey, reported in Americans and YouTube 2025, placed YouTube first among the listed platforms: 85% of U.S. adults used it. Facebook reached 70%, while Instagram reached 50%. These figures measure platform use, not the frequency with which people use the service or whether they use it for news.
In Americans’ Social Media Use, Pew reported TikTok use among 33% of U.S. adults in its 2024 comparison. The report also said TikTok use was up 12 percentage points from 2021 to 2023/24. BeReal had 3% adult use in the 2024 survey. The time labels matter: the first figure is a 2024 adult-use measure, while the change figure refers to Pew’s 2021-to-2023/24 comparison.
The broader pattern is a multi-platform audience rather than a single universal network. Among adults under 30, 74% used at least five of the platforms asked about. That share was 53% among adults ages 30 to 49, 30% among those ages 50 to 64, and 8% among adults ages 65 and older. For publishers, this distribution points to different discovery environments across age groups.
Several demographic differences are especially pronounced:
- LinkedIn use reached 40% among adults ages 30 to 49.
- X use reached 29% among adults with household income of at least $100,000.
- Pinterest use was 50% among women and 19% among men.
- WhatsApp use was 54% among Hispanic adults, 51% among Asian adults, 31% among Black adults and 20% among White adults.
These are subgroup results from Pew Research Center’s Americans’ Social Media Use, so they should not be read as estimates for every market or as measures of engagement intensity.
Age differences in platform reach
Age is a particularly clear dividing line in the available platform statistics. Instagram reached 78% of adults ages 18 to 29, compared with 15% of adults ages 65 and older. TikTok reached 62% of adults ages 18 to 29 and 10% of adults ages 65 and older. Snapchat showed an even wider gap: 65% among adults under 30 versus 4% among adults ages 65 and older.
| Platform or behavior | Younger group | Older group |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram use | 78% ages 18–29 | 15% ages 65+ |
| TikTok use | 62% ages 18–29 | 10% ages 65+ |
| Snapchat use | 65% under 30 | 4% ages 65+ |
| Use of at least five surveyed platforms | 74% under 30 | 8% ages 65+ |
Source: Pew Research Center, Americans’ Social Media Use. The comparison is descriptive, not a claim that age alone causes platform choice. It does show why a newsroom, broadcaster or media startup may need different packaging and distribution strategies for younger and older audiences.
The middle age groups also matter. Fifty-three percent of adults ages 30 to 49 used at least five surveyed platforms, compared with 30% of adults ages 50 to 64. LinkedIn’s 40% use rate among adults ages 30 to 49 adds another signal that professional and career-oriented networks can be relevant to media products aimed at working-age readers.
Who sees news on social networks
Platform reach and news reach are not identical. Pew Research Center’s 5 Facts About Americans and YouTube reported that 57% of YouTube news consumers were men and 42% were women. Among adult YouTube users, 24% said they regularly get news from news influencers on any social site. The latter measure concerns influencer-led news access across social sites, not only YouTube.
The mix of accounts and voices also differs by platform. In Pew Research Center’s How Americans Get News on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram, 80% of X news consumers said they get news from news outlets or journalists on X. Forty-nine percent said they get news from influencers or celebrities, 46% from advocacy or nonprofit organizations, and 26% from other people they do not know personally.
These categories can overlap: the figures describe types of sources X news consumers report seeing, not mutually exclusive audience segments. They nevertheless show that news discovery on a platform can involve institutional journalism, personalities, organizations and unfamiliar individual accounts at the same time.
Signals of trust, repetition and fatigue
The available measures also capture how people experience news in their feeds. Twenty-three percent of TikTok news consumers said they often see news there that seems inaccurate, according to Pew Research Center’s platform news study. On X, 21% of news consumers said X influences which stories they see a lot, and 20% said they feel extremely or very worn out by news on X.
Facebook results provide a different view of duplication and distinctiveness. Thirty-six percent of Facebook news consumers said mostly the news they get there is news they would have gotten elsewhere. Forty-eight percent said they get news there and elsewhere in about equal amounts. Fourteen percent said mostly the news they get there is unique to Facebook. In the same study, 23% said they feel extremely or very worn out by news on Facebook.
Taken together, these numbers describe separate audience perceptions rather than a single trust score. Perceived inaccuracy on TikTok, strong story-selection influence on X, and overlap between Facebook news and news encountered elsewhere each point to a different editorial or product question: verification, recommendation power, and incremental reach.
Teen audiences and platform change
Teen platform use provides a distinct measurement frame from adult use. Pew Research Center’s Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024 found that 90% of U.S. teens used YouTube in 2024, down from 95% in 2022. Facebook use stood at 32% in 2024. X use was 17%, down from 23% in 2022.
Other teen results moved in the opposite direction. WhatsApp use reached 23% in 2024, up 6 percentage points from 2022. Reddit use was 14% in 2024. These changes are reported comparisons between the stated survey periods; they should not be treated as forecasts of future teen adoption.
For media organizations, the teen figures reinforce two cautions. First, high platform reach does not guarantee that every audience is growing: YouTube and X both had lower reported teen use in 2024 than in 2022. Second, a platform with a smaller overall role can still show momentum in a particular audience: WhatsApp’s six-point increase is meaningful within the stated teen comparison even though its 2024 share was 23%.
Where marketers planned to spend
The global marketing outlook in Nielsen’s 2024 Annual Marketing Report points to strong but selective spending intentions. Seventy-two percent of global marketers expected bigger advertising budgets in 2024. That is a reported expectation, not a measured final increase in spending.
Seventy percent of global marketers planned to prioritize performance marketing over brand building in 2024. Sixty-three percent planned to allocate media spending to digital channels. These figures indicate stated priorities and planned allocation, not a complete accounting of realized budgets across every channel or region.
The relationship between audience behavior and budget planning is not one-to-one. Pew’s U.S. figures measure reported use and news habits among adults or teens, while Nielsen’s figures summarize global marketers’ expectations and plans for 2024. The two perspectives can be read together as a snapshot of a media industry balancing broad digital reach, platform-specific news discovery, demographic fragmentation and pressure to demonstrate performance.
For journalism and media innovation teams, the practical signal is the need to keep these measures distinct. A platform can have broad adult reach without being the main source of news for every user. A news network can combine outlets, influencers and organizations in one feed. A demographic subgroup can use several platforms at once. And a planned digital allocation or performance-marketing priority describes intent rather than a completed financial outcome.