The Pew Research Center finds YouTube, Facebook and Instagram retain a lock on Americans’ attention, with Threads, Bluesky, and Truth Social chipping away at that lead at the fringe.
A new survey of how people use social-media platforms not only rounds up the usual suspects–with almost no change in the usage of the top three services–but spotlights the progress of three newer platforms.
The Pew Research Center’s latest “Americans’ Social Media Use” report, published Thursday, shows Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram unchallenged as the big three networks: 84% of respondents reported that they ever use Google’s video-streaming hub, 71% said the same for Facebook, and 50% said that about Insta.
Those numbers reflected little change from the figures Pew published in January 2024: 83%, 68%, and 47%.
The rest of that Washington-based nonprofit’s report, however, reveals much more change. TikTok continued its climb, with 37% of respondents saying they ever use the short-form video platform–up from 33% in the earlier report, and much more than somebody might have expected when the Supreme Court upheld a law this January banning it from US app stores.
(President Trump then ignored that law’s provisions while TikTok owner ByteDance has continued to negotiate some sort of sale to US owners.
