The Pew Research Center reports that 5% more American adults are getting some of their news from social media than did so in 2016.
Also for the first time in 2017, Americans using social media for news include the majority (55%) of those over 50.
Facebook, because of its enormous user base, is the #1 social media site for news, providing 45% of US adults with at least some of their news, followed by YouTube at 18% and Twitter at 11%.
News usership increased in the past year at Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat as a result of investment these companies have made to improve their sites' usability for news.
Not unexpectedly, 26% of Americans surveyed said they are getting news from multiple social-media sources in 2017.
Demographic-wise, women predominate in news-reading at Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat; men at YouTube, Twitter and Linkedin. And 82% of Snapchat news-readers, but only 14% of Linkedin news-readers, are under age 30.
Don't count TV out yet: 91% of Americans who use social media for news still also get some of their news from local, cable or network TV.
But only 25% from radio and 18% from print newspapers.
The related shift in ad spend is what's causing newspapers to cut staff or stop publishing altogether.
Marketers and agency people feel the print media's pain - but there's no turning back from digital advertising now.
- David
