Social Media, Online Video Become Top News Sources

Social media content, especially video, has surpassed television as the top news source for Americans, a report from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism finds. 

At 54%, the proportion of respondents accessing news via social media and video networks in the United States has risen sharply, overtaking both TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%) for the first time, according to the report. Six social media or video platforms have weekly news reaches of 10% or more: Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, X and TikTok. 

People who create social media and video content are attracting audiences that traditional media now struggle to reach. Some of the most popular personalities are young men whose audiences lean to the political right and don’t trust mainstream media outlets, which they see as biased and part of the liberal elite.

“Younger groups, especially those aged 18–24, are much more likely than older ones to prefer watching — or listening to — the news,” the report’s authors wrote. 

To reach those audiences, news publishers need to produce less text and more audio-visual content. Between 2021 and 2025, the share of the U.S. population consuming news video at least weekly increased from 55% to 72%, with most of the news video being viewed on social media.

Meanwhile, most audiences are unwilling to pay for online news. The majority of Americans (83%) say they have not paid for news in the past year, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March. The Pew report found that just 1% of Americans will pay for access when they come across an article behind a paywall.