What Did Pew Publish on October 19, 2026?
Pew Research Center published three linked pieces from one survey: an updated Social Media and News Fact Sheet, an updated News Platform Fact Sheet and a short read on TikTok. Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C., and these fact sheets are annual updates of series it has run for several years, so most figures can be compared with earlier years (Pew, Social Media and News Fact Sheet; Pew, News Platform Fact Sheet; Pew, 1 in 5 Americans Regularly Get News on TikTok).
All three draw on Wave 198 of the American Trends Panel, a panel of randomly selected U.S. adults. 5,166 panelists responded out of 5,602 sampled, a 92% response rate for the wave; the cumulative response rate, which accounts for panel recruitment and attrition, is 3%. Interviews were online (4,997) and by live telephone (169), in English and Spanish (Pew methodology).
“Get news” in these surveys means what respondents say about their own habits. Pew asked how often people get news from each platform (often, sometimes, rarely or never), whether they “regularly” get news on each social site they use, and which single platform they prefer.
Which Social Media Sites Do Americans Use for News?
Facebook and YouTube, by a wide margin. Pew says the two “continue to outpace all other social media sites when it comes to news consumption”: 40% of U.S. adults regularly get news on Facebook and 34% on YouTube (Pew).
% of all U.S. adults, survey conducted August 24-30, 2026
Source: Pew Research Center, "Social Media and News Fact Sheet," October 19, 2026. Read October 21, 2026.
Shares of all U.S. adults, not of each site's users. Only respondents who said they use a site were asked whether they regularly get news there. Pew also reports WhatsApp (5%), Rumble (2%), Truth Social (2%) and Bluesky (1%).
Facebook and YouTube together reach far more regular news consumers than every other site on the list, and LinkedIn, the network most B2B companies post to first, sits near the bottom of it.
Pew’s trend table shows how the order has moved. The 2020 and 2025 figures below come from the same fact sheet.
| Site | 2020 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 36% | 38% | 40% | |
| YouTube | 23% | 35% | 34% |
| 11% | 20% | 23% | |
| TikTok | 3% | 20% | 20% |
| X (formerly Twitter) | 15% | 12% | 10% |
Source: Pew Research Center, Social Media and News Fact Sheet, October 19, 2026; percentages of all U.S. adults who say they regularly get news on each site. TikTok’s share is “unchanged from 2025 but up from just 3% in 2020,” Pew says (Pew).
A second measure looks only at each site’s own users. 57% of Facebook users and 57% of X users say they regularly get news there, as do 53% of TikTok users, 46% of Instagram users, 45% of Nextdoor users (up from 33% in 2025), 41% of YouTube users, 35% of Reddit users and 20% of LinkedIn users (Pew). X is small as a news source across the whole population but news-heavy among the people who still use it.
How Many Get News From Search, Podcasts, Newsletters and AI Chatbots?
Search reaches the most people, and AI chatbots are the fastest-growing path, from a small base. Pew says the shares getting news from social media and from search “have both increased since 2025,” and that AI chatbots “have become a source of news for more Americans in the past year” (Pew).
| Digital platform | Often | Sometimes | Rarely | Never |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| News websites or apps | 27% | 39% | 18% | 16% |
| Social media | 26% | 33% | 17% | 23% |
| Search | 25% | 45% | 19% | 11% |
| Podcasts | 10% | 22% | 25% | 43% |
| Email newsletters | 8% | 26% | 29% | 37% |
| AI chatbots | 3% | 12% | 20% | 65% |
Source: Pew Research Center, News Platform Fact Sheet, October 19, 2026; % of U.S. adults. Respondents who do not use the internet are counted as “Never.” Rows may not sum to 100% because of rounding.
Pew puts the AI figure at 15% “at least sometimes,” up from 9% in 2025, and names ChatGPT and Google Gemini as examples. About a third of adults get news from email newsletters (34%) or podcasts (32%) at least sometimes. Across all devices, 88% of adults get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet at least sometimes, against 63% for television; 12% often get news from radio and 6% from printed newspapers or magazines (Pew).
Which Platform Do Americans Prefer for News?
Television is still the most common single preference, at 28%, but it is falling. Pew reports that the share preferring television fell from 34% to 28% between 2025 and 2026, while the share preferring social media rose from 14% to 19% (Pew).
| Preferred platform for news | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Television | 34% | 28% |
| News websites or apps | 21% | 21% |
| Social media | 14% | 19% |
| Search | 10% | 12% |
| Podcasts | 6% | 5% |
| Radio | 5% | 5% |
| Printed newspapers or magazines | 5% | 4% |
| Email newsletters | 3% | 2% |
| AI chatbots | Less than 1% | 1% |
Source: Pew Research Center, News Platform Fact Sheet, October 19, 2026; % of U.S. adults who prefer each platform for getting news. The gap between use and preference matters: 15% get news from chatbots at least sometimes, but 1% prefer them.
Who Gets News Where?
Age divides the platforms most sharply. Among adults ages 18 to 29, 39% regularly get news on TikTok and 43% on Instagram; among adults 65 and older, the figures are 4% and 8% (Pew; Pew). Facebook is strongest among adults ages 30 to 49, at 49%.
Other splits Pew reports: women are more likely than men to regularly get news on Facebook (47% vs 33%), while men are more likely to get it on YouTube (41% vs 28%) and X (15% vs 6%). College graduates are more likely than adults with a high school education or less to get news on LinkedIn (11% vs 3%), though LinkedIn’s overall share is 6%. Hispanic adults have the highest Facebook figure of any group Pew lists (51%), and Black (32%) and Hispanic (35%) adults are more likely than White and Asian adults (14% each) to get news on TikTok (Pew; Pew).
Pew also gives overall use of each site, which puts the news figures in context: 84% of U.S. adults use YouTube, 70% Facebook, 51% Instagram, 37% TikTok, 31% LinkedIn, 25% Reddit and 18% X (Pew).
What This Means for Anyone Buying a Placement
Pew measures audiences, not the value of any article, so what follows is our reading of the data, not a finding of the survey.
- Plan for the second audience. Search is used for news at least sometimes by 70% of adults (25% often, 45% sometimes) and social media by 59%. Most people who see a story about a company will meet it in a feed, a search result or a summary, not on the outlet’s home page. A placement whose headline and first paragraph state the news plainly travels better through all three.
- Do not over-weight LinkedIn for broad reach. It is the default channel for many B2B announcements, and it fits a professional audience, but 6% of U.S. adults regularly get news there. For general audiences, Facebook and YouTube reach far more regular news consumers.
- Treat AI chatbots as growing but small. 15% get news from chatbots at least sometimes and 1% prefer them. Earned coverage on sites that AI assistants can read and cite is worth having; a vendor promising that a placement will appear in ChatGPT answers is promising something no outlet controls. See which sources AI assistants cite and why half of American adults never use AI chatbots.
- Podcasts and newsletters are a third of the market. About a third of adults get news from each at least sometimes. A guest spot or a newsletter mention reaches a smaller but more deliberate audience; see which podcast platform gives a guest search visibility.
- Paid is still paid. A sponsored post on any of these platforms is advertising and must be disclosed as such; reach figures do not change that. See how paid content must be labelled.
For how readers share the coverage they do see, see our earlier report on how Americans engage with news online.
Methodology and Limitations
Four limits apply. First, these are self-reports: people describe their habits, and Pew does not measure what they actually read or watch. Second, “regularly” is the respondent’s own judgment, and only people who said they use a site were asked about getting news there. Third, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points for the full sample and larger for subgroups such as age bands, so one- or two-point year-to-year changes, such as YouTube’s move from 35% to 34%, may be noise (Pew methodology). Fourth, the survey covers U.S. adults only and says nothing about which outlets people trust or which stories they click.
We read all three Pew pages and the methodology statement on October 21, 2026, and copied every figure from Pew’s own tables. Where we calculated nothing, we say so; the only figure we derived is the 70% for search, which is Pew’s “often” (25%) plus “sometimes” (45%).
Conclusion
Pew’s 2026 figures describe a news audience that mostly arrives sideways: through search, Facebook, YouTube and, for a growing minority, AI chatbots. For a company paying for coverage, that cuts both ways. An article in a respected outlet still matters, but how it reads in a search snippet, a shared link or a chatbot summary decides how many people actually take in the news, and no placement fee buys control of those surfaces.
Frequently Asked Questions
What share of Americans get news from social media in 2026?
59% of U.S. adults say they get news from social media at least sometimes, according to Pew Research Center’s survey of August 24 to 30, 2026, published October 19, 2026.
Which social media site do Americans use most for news?
Facebook. 40% of U.S. adults regularly get news there, followed by YouTube at 34%, Instagram at 23% and TikTok at 20%, per Pew’s Social Media and News Fact Sheet.
How many Americans get news from AI chatbots?
15% of U.S. adults get news from AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini at least sometimes, up from 9% in 2025, according to Pew. Only 1% say chatbots are their preferred source.
Is television still the most preferred source of news?
Yes, but it is declining. Pew found 28% prefer television for news in 2026, down from 34% in 2025, while the share preferring social media rose from 14% to 19%.
How many Americans get news on LinkedIn?
6% of U.S. adults regularly get news on LinkedIn, per Pew, including 11% of college graduates. Among LinkedIn’s own users, 20% regularly get news there.
How large was Pew’s survey?
Pew surveyed 5,166 U.S. adults on its American Trends Panel from August 24 to 30, 2026. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points.
Sources and Methodology
This report is built from Pew Research Center’s three October 19, 2026 releases and the survey’s methodology statement, all read on October 21, 2026. Every figure is copied from Pew’s own tables; the only derived number is the 70% for search, the sum of Pew’s “often” and “sometimes” shares. The section on buying placements is our recommendation, not a finding of the survey.
- survey research Pew Research Center, Social Media and News Fact Sheet, October 19, 2026. Supports the 59% figure, platform shares, trends since 2020, shares of each site’s users and demographic splits. Read October 21, 2026.
- survey research Pew Research Center, News Platform Fact Sheet, October 19, 2026. Supports device, digital-platform and preference figures, including AI chatbots (15%, up from 9%). Read October 21, 2026.
- survey research Katerina Eva Matsa, Pew Research Center, 1 in 5 Americans Regularly Get News on TikTok, October 19, 2026. Supports TikTok figures by age and race, and overall site use. Read October 21, 2026.
- survey research Pew Research Center, The American Trends Panel survey methodology, Wave 198 (PDF). Supports sample size, field dates, response rates and margin of error. Read October 21, 2026.