Social Media Platforms Take The King Of The Hill On The News Pile

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 07/31/2026) The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 found that social media and video platforms have become the world’s leading source of news for the first time.

Globally, 54% of respondents said they get news from social media, compared with 52% from television and 51% from news websites. In the United States, 56% used social media for news, while 45% used television and 45% used news websites.

Facebook remained the most widely used social media platform for news, reaching 43% globally and 36% in the United States. YouTube followed at 34% globally and 33% domestically.

Among U.S. respondents, Instagram stood at 18%, while X fell to 16%. TikTok reached 10% and Reddit 9%.

WhatsApp showed the largest difference between global and U.S. use, reaching 26% worldwide but only 8% in the United States. Threads and Telegram each reached 5% domestically, followed by LinkedIn at 4% and Snapchat at 3%. Bluesky, Mastodon, Discord, Twitch and Signal each registered between 1% and 2%.

Traditional formats continued to decline. In the United States, podcast use for news slipped from 15% to 14%, while artificial intelligence chatbots fell to 6%. Radio dropped to 10%, and print fell below 8%.

Trust in news also continued to weaken. Globally, 37% said they trusted the news, the lowest level recorded since the report began in 2015. In the United States, 47% said they did not trust the news, while 75% expressed concern about online misinformation.

News avoidance also remained high. Forty-five percent of Americans said they often avoid the news, while another 28% said they sometimes do. Seventeen percent said they were not interested in news at all, and 38% described themselves as only somewhat interested.

The report also found that 80% of Americans do not pay for online news.

At the same time, the nonprofit news sector continued to expand, growing from about 150 U.S. outlets in 2016 to more than 500 in 2026.

Social media creators and podcast personalities also continued to gain influence in political news. Thirty-two percent of Americans said they received at least some news from creators, while 3% relied exclusively on them.

That audience was highly polarized, with people on the left and right gravitating toward distinct personalities, including Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson.

Americans who relied primarily on social media creators were three times more likely to say creator-based news was more trustworthy than traditional media. Those who depended exclusively on creators also tended to fall at the ideological extremes of the political spectrum.