Two out of five Americans regularly get their news on Facebook

Despite what my Facebook feed looks like, the platform’s not just for AI fruit videos and birthday posts.

According to data from the Pew Research Center published Monday, 40% of adults in the United States regularly get their news from Facebook.

That’s up from 36% in 2020, signaling the continued stability of the platform as a news source — a trend that the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism observed in its Digital News Report this year. As we reported in June, people around the world are increasingly abandoning news websites for social media.

The Center surveyed 5,600 U.S. adults in late August as part of its American Trends Panel, and asked respondents several questions about their news and social media habits. Pew did not give respondents a definition of “news,” instead letting them use their own understanding of the term when they filled out the survey. More than half (59%) said that they get news from social media “often or sometimes,” but only 19% actually prefer social media as a place to get news.

Of Facebook news consumers, 33% are men and 49% are between the ages of 30 and 49. The platform is most popular for women (47%), Hispanic Americans (51%), Americans with a high school diploma or less (46%), and Republicans (43%).

Regular news consumption among American users has increased on nine of the 12 social media platforms that Pew studied, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Reddit, Nextdoor, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp. News consumption has either dropped or stayed the same on Rumble, Truth Social, and Bluesky.

The second-most regularly used platform among American adults is YouTube (34%), followed by Instagram (23%), TikTok (20%), and X (10%). YouTube news consumers are more likely to be male (41%), between ages 18 and 29 (39%), and identify as Black (47%) or Asian (53%). Republicans (35%) and Democrats (36%) are equal YouTube news consumers.

The most regularly used platform for news among young adults is Instagram (43%), followed by Facebook (40%), TikTok and YouTube (both 39%), and X and Reddit (both 18%).  The Center found that 20% of U.S. adults now regularly get their news on TikTok, up from 3% in 2020. Of TikTok users, 53% reported getting news regularly on the platform. Nextdoor users are also increasingly turning to the neighborhood forum app for information. In 2026, 45% of Nextdoor users reported regularly getting news from the app, up from 23% in 2022.

Read the full report here.