Pew Research:  Americans’ Social Media Use 2025

Polls like this are interesting because social media keeps changing, and most of use don’t want to join everything to figure out which ones are worthwhile.

This graph is for social media that people ever use, without regard to how often or for how long.

Youtube is winning because it’s easy.  Many people don’t have an account or ever subscribe to a channel, and still find interesting content.

Facebook benefits from being the first to take off with the general public.  Another graphic in the survey is interesting.

Facebook is the only social media platform that is least popular with both the old (+65) and young (18-29) groups.  Old folks are less inclined to use any social media.  About 10 years ago, Facebook modified it’s platform in unpopular ways.  For the last few years of my teaching career, my students only had Facebook accounts to communicate with extended family.

Social media platforms have specific uses. 

Engaging content can be found on Youtube and Reddit without an account.

Twitter/X and TikTok are cited pretty often as sources of news or trends in online articles or blog posts.

Bluesky and Truth Social seem to be for political partisans who want to be around compatible opinions.

Whats App, Instagram and Snapchat must be good for something, but I don’t know what.