A new YouGov survey explored how Americans feel about social media platforms and how those platforms regulate and display content. The majority of Americans are spending an average of at least an hour per day on social media, much of it on Facebook or YouTube.
Two-thirds (67%) of Americans' daily average social media time is at least one hour, including 26% who say they spend a daily average of between one and two hours on social media and 22% who say they spend between three and four hours on it.
Adults under 30 report spending the most time on social media. 84% are on it at least one hour per day, including 43% who say they spend a daily average of at least five hours on social media. Only 13% of older adults say the same. In March 2023, fewer adults under 30 (32%) spent an average of five or more hours daily on social media.
Facebook is the social media platform used by the greatest share of Americans: 73% say they’ve used it recently. Other popular social media platforms include YouTube (64%), Instagram (41%), TikTok (29%), and X, previously known as Twitter (28%).
Even among adults under 30, Facebook has been used recently by a greater share of people than have used TikTok recently (61% vs. 54%).
Adults under 30 are more likely than older adults to have recently used nearly all of the social media platforms asked about. Among the exceptions: Facebook (61% of adults under 30 and 76% of older adults have used it recently) and Nextdoor (3% vs 11%).
In March 2023, a similar question about which social networks people were a member of found that Facebook topped the list, with 70% who were members on the social network. Fewer were members of Instagram (41%), Twitter (33%) and TikTok (26%) at the time.
The social media platforms used most often by the greatest share of Americans is Facebook: 37% say this is their most-used platform. It’s trailed by YouTube (21%), X (21%), WhatsApp (7%), and Instagram (7%).
Among adults under 30, 22% say YouTube is the platform they use most often, 18% say WhatsApp, and 15% name Facebook.
Many social media platforms default to showing content to a user based on algorithms that consider factors such as the user’s interests and behaviors, the popularity of the content, and the engagement the content has received. Only 24% of Americans say this algorithm-based display is their preferred way to interact with social media content. About twice as many (51%) prefer for content to be displayed chronologically, meaning posts are displayed in the order they were published, with the newest posts appearing first. Very few (4%) prefer a curated display with posts selected by an editorial team or appointed user.
Adults under 30 are more likely to prefer algorithm-based displays (51%) rather than chronological ones (30%) while the reverse is true for older adults: 16% prefer algorithm-based displays and 57% prefer chronological ones.
In March 2023, fewer adults under 30 (38%) preferred an algorithm-based system.
How content is moderated also affects a user’s social media experience. 25% of Americans say they prefer a human moderation approach, where a team of human moderators identifies and removes content that violates the platform’s terms of service. 22% would prefer a system that relies on users to report content that violates the terms of service, with a team of moderators reviewing reported content and removing content that is in violation. Fewer (17%) say they would prefer an automated moderation system where the platform uses algorithms to identify and remove content or a minimally moderated platform (16%) where most or all content remains on the service regardless of whether it violates the terms of service.
30% of Americans think the way most major social media platforms regulate the content posted to their sites is not strict enough. 30% think most major platforms are about right when it comes to regulating content and 22% think most major platforms are too strict.
Republicans (32%) are more likely than Independents (21%) and Democrats (10%) to say most major social media platforms are too strict with content regulation.
Majorities of Americans believe social media companies have a responsibility to prevent users from harassing others on their site (76%), posting hate speech or racist content on their site (70%), or spreading conspiracy theories or false information on their site (61%). About half (48%) think social media companies have a responsibility to expose users to diverse perspectives on their platform; 27% say they do not have a responsibility to do this.
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say social media companies have a responsibility to prevent users from spreading conspiracy theories or false information (80% vs. 53%). Democrats are also more likely to say these companies have a responsibility to prevent users from posting hate speech or racist content (81% vs. 66%).
One-third of Americans think that the best approach for social media companies to take in response to false information being posted by users on their platforms is to delete the posts. 28% think the best approach is to add context from independent fact-checking organizations. 36% of Democrats and 21% of Republicans favor this strategy. Only 8% of Americans — including 2% of Democrats and 14% of Republicans — think no action should be taken.
50% of Americans think social media platforms very or somewhat often wrongly remove content that does not violate their content rules. 29% think this happens not very often (22%) or not at all often (7%). Slightly more (55%) think the opposite — content that is in violation of the platform’s content rules remaining up — happens very or somewhat often. Democrats (62%) are more likely than Republicans (51%) to say this happens often.
Most Americans (57%) think social media companies are biased when applying the rules for fact checking or censorship and only 20% think they are fair when doing so.
28% of Americans think social media outlets are biased in favor of Democrats; 16% say they’re biased in favor of Republicans. 26% say these platforms are not politically biased either way.
50% of Republicans say social media outlets are biased in favor of Democrats while just 7% of Democrats agree. 5% of Republicans think social media outlets are biased in favor of Republicans; 31% of Democrats say the same.
Half (50%) of Americans think the spread of misinformation on social media platforms is a very serious problem and the same percentage say the negative impact on children’s development from social media platforms is a very serious problem. Many Americans also see the negative impact on mental health (43%), harassment of users (37%), political bias among fact-checkers (37%), and inadequate privacy (36%) to be very serious problems on social media platforms.
Among the biggest differences between Democrats and Republicans: 70% of Democrats and 35% of Republicans think the spread of misinformation on social media platforms is a very serious problem. 30% of Democrats and 11% of Republicans say the same about a lack of government regulation on social media platforms. 44% of Democrats and 28% of Republicans think harassment of users is a very serious problem. 29% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans think political bias among fact-checkers is a very serious problem.
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See the results for this YouGov survey
— Carl Bialik and Taylor Orth contributed to this article
Methodology: This article includes results from an online survey conducted January 8 - 12, 2025 among 1,156 U.S. adult citizens. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of adult U.S. citizens. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 presidential vote, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. 2024 presidential vote, at time of weighting, was estimated to be 48% Harris and 50% Trump. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given around November 8, 2024, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4%.
Image: Getty (Xavier Lorenzo)
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