Social media news consumption is now mainstream in the US. In a survey released on October 23, 2026, Pew Research Center found 58% of American adults consider social media an important pathway to news, and 13% call it their most important news source. In 2022 those figures were 43% and 5%.
| Measure | 2022 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Social media is an important news pathway | 43% | 58% |
| Social media is the most important news source | 5% | 13% |
Pew surveyed more than 3,500 US adults in June 2026. Applied to a US adult population of roughly 270 million, 13% works out to about 35 million people who treat social platforms as their first stop for news. The "most important source" share more than doubled in four years.
In 2021, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said users wanted less political content and that Facebook would reduce news in feeds. People did not stop looking for news; they found more of it on social platforms. Meanwhile, in January 2025 Meta ended third-party fact-checking in the US and moved to a user-driven Community Notes model.
The result is more reliance on social feeds at the same time that platform-level verification has weakened. News about brands spreads in that same environment.
The Pew data covers the US, so the numbers should not be applied directly to Korea. Still, Korean audiences increasingly get news from social and YouTube rather than portal homepages, and we use the same principles when running brand channels there.
Source: Social Media Today
Pew's 2026 survey found 58% see social media as an important news pathway and 13% as their most important source.
Important pathway rose from 43% to 58%, and most important source rose from 5% to 13%.
Pew surveyed more than 3,500 US adults in June 2026 and released the results on October 23, 2026.
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