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Get Your News From Social Media? You Don't Know as Much as You Think You Do

Almost one-fifth of the populace (mostly under 30) gets its political and election news from social media, according to the Pew Center, and even then they aren't paying much attention.

Eric Griffith
 & Eric Griffith Senior Editor, Features

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US citizens who get all their political and election news from social media—including coronavirus info, since it's so politicized in the US—are "less engaged [and] less knowledgeable" than those who seek it out via other sources, according to the Pew Research Center.

Pew's American News Pathways project conducted a series of surveys between October 2019 and June 2020, and the first—from October to November 2019—charted people's primary news pathway (outlet) used. Of those surveyed, 18 percent of people got their primary news fix via social media. Most people still opt for a news website or app (25 percent), but social media was ahead of cable TV (16 percent) and local TV (16 percent). Don't look at the number for print, it'll make you cry.

Social Media Primarily

Follow-ups with the social media news users indicated their demographics are mostly young, age 18 to 29, at 48 percent, and plenty of 30- to 49-year-olds (40 percent) as well. Most, are female. Most lean left. Few of them are Black, but 21 percent are Hispanic.

Demographics of social media news readers

The problem, as Pew states clearly, is, "this group tends to pay less attention to news than those who rely on most other pathways." Only 8 percent would claim they were following things like the 2020 election closely; the engagement is much higher with readers of print (33 percent) and viewers of cable TV (37 percent). Local TV news watchers are, however, similarly unengaged.

You can see the knowledge index on the top right.  (Pew created a "knowledge index" by asking respondents nine political knowledge questions, such as what party supports what policies, with "high knowledge" going to those who answered eight or nine questions correctly.)

Worse: those who rely on social media were a lot more likely to have heard conspiracy theories (which Pew politely refers to at one point as "unproven claims"). One example Pew used was the nonsense about the rich and powerful somehow intentionally setting off the COVID-19 pandemic, which was making the rounds in a video on social media for a while. Twenty-six percent of social media users had at least heard/seen a conspiracy theory and knew a little bit or a lot about it; next best was local TV news at 20 percent. (Seriously, local TV news, what is up?) Results on that are on the top left.

The least likely way to get infected with conspiracies: print journalism, at 12 percent.  

Other conspiracy craziness, like Vitamin C preventing COVID or connections between 5G and the virus, also got more play on social media "news" than anywhere else.

There are other sobering, depressing stats to be found in the full multi-page report.

Further Reading

Social Media Reviews

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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