Almost 40% of Americans Under 30 Hear from Social Media Influencers

A growing number of Americans regularly hear from social media influencers, including 21 percent of adults and 37 percent of teens ages 18 to 29 surveyed, according to a new report. Pew Research Center. The Pew report, along with news Monday that the Associated Press will lay off 8% of its workforce, is the latest sign that news consumption in the U.S. will likely continue to diverge from traditional institutions in the coming years.

The study examined influencers with more than 100,000 followers on a given platform, narrowing down the news influencers on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X to 2,058. How does Pew define influencers? These are “people who have a large following on social media and frequently post about news, political or social issues.” However, the study did not include any accounts that were part of an official news organization. Politicians were also excluded.

Building on this, the study looked at the social media habits and content consumption of 10,658 Americans between July 15 and August 4, 2024. 2,058 impressive A sufficiently large following has been identified on social media. Big names include right-wingers like Benny Johnson, Dinesh D’Souza, Matt Walsh, Jack Posobiec and Charlie Kirk, while liberals include people like Brian Tyler Cohen, Ashley Judd and Heather Cox Richardson.

An overwhelming 85% of influencers in the study had a presence on X, but it will be interesting to see how these numbers compare to the media landscape a year from now. Following the presidential election on November 5, there was a massive exodus of liberals and centrists fed up with X owner Elon Musk and his transformation of the site into a safe haven for right-wing extremists.

The research found that 50% of the most popular influencers have a presence on Instagram, the second most popular platform for news influencers. The rest of the list includes YouTube (44%), Facebook (32%), Threads (30%), TikTok (27%), LinkedIn (12%), Rumble (11%), Telegram 7%, Truth Social 5. %), Gettr (4%), Gab (4%) and BitChute (less than 1%). Bluesky had no influencers, and if Pew repeats the study a year from now, that could be an interesting case, too.

The gender distinction in the report is quite interesting. Roughly 63% of influencers were male and 30% were female; the remainder were non-binary or gender-unidentified by researchers. TikTok had the highest percentage of female influencers at 45%, but men still made up a larger percentage of the top influencer accounts at 50%. The largest gender gap was on YouTube, where 68% of influencers were male and only 28% were female.

There was also a big difference between generations. While 21 percent of U.S. adults overall say they regularly hear from influencers on social media, those ages 18-29 top the list at 37 percent, while 26 percent of those ages 30-49 say the same. Only 15% of Americans ages 50-64 say they hear from influencers regularly, and 7% of those 65+ report the same.

According to their biographies, 27% of the influencers surveyed were right-wing, 21% were left-wing, and the rest expressed no clear political orientation. TikTok was the only site on the platform where clearly left-leaning influencers made up a larger percentage of influence, at 28%, compared to 25% for right-leaning influencers.

According to Pew, nearly 77 percent of influencers have no past affiliation with any news organization, while 23 percent have previously worked for a traditional news organization in some way. And those least likely to express clear political affiliation are 23%.