Nine Percent of Americans Regularly Rely on Social Networks for News
Only 9 percent of all Americans regularly get news from social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, a new survey shows. But that percentage jumps to 21 percent among Americans ages 30 to 39—the most of any age group.
When it comes to only those Americans who are active in social networking, 16 percent regularly get news from sites like Facebook. Among Twitter users, that figure is 17 percent.
Those are some of the findings in the survey, which was done by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which examined Americans’ news consumption habits.
The survey shows 7 percent of all Americans—lumping together social networkers and non-social networkers—regularly obtain news from social networking sites like Facebook and 2 percent through Twitter.
Other findings of the survey include:
- Men and women are equally as likely to get news through Twitter or social networking sites.
- Twitter users are more likely to follow news organizations or individual journalists (24 percent) than users of social networking sites like Facebook (16 percent).
- Far fewer Americans send news through social networking sites or Twitter than receive news. The survey indicates 21 percent of social networking users send news through these sites. Meanwhile, 15 percent send through Twitter.
- Forty-five percent of Americans have created profiles on a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn. Far fewer use Twitter (9 percent).
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