YouTube Rising as Most Popular Social Media Platform for News in U.S.
Quickly catching up to Facebook.
According to a new report, YouTube is now catching up to Facebook as America’s most popular social media platform for news.
The 2020 digital news report from the Reuters Institute indicates that while 35 percent of Americans still use Facebook for news compared to YouTube’s 24 percent, the former platform saw a 4 percent decrease in popularity over the last year, whereas the latter service saw an equal 4 percent increase.
The trend isn’t just observed domestically either, and can be traced back to as early as 2016. Across 12 countries including the U.K., Germany, Japan, France, and Brazil, the popularity of Facebook as a social media platform for news information has gradually decreased while YouTube has been on the increase over the past four years.
At the same time, another survey of 80,000 people found that Facebook has now become the most distrusted social media platform across 40 different countries, with 29 percent of the respondents expressing concern about potentially false or misleading information presented on the service. The percentage increases to 35 percent when look at American respondents alone, compared to just 5 percent who share the same sentiment towards YouTube.
In related news, Facebook and Instagram are now allowing users to hide political ads for the next U.S. election.
