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About a portion of Americans use Instagram, and it’s especially popular with young adults and teens. In addition to being an area of social connection and other functions, Instagram serves as a source of news and data for some: 16% of U. S. adults said last year that they get news there regularly.
Our survey examines reports from U. S. Instagram users. U. S. Key findings include:
Three in ten Instagram users in the U. S. say they get data on the platform normally, which is less than the percentage of users of X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and Facebook who are normal consumers of data on the site.
And two-thirds of Instagram users say receiving data is an explanation for why they use Instagram, while one-third say receiving data is a primary (8%) or minor (25%) explanation.
Read more: Reasons to use Instagram
But most Instagram users report seeing news-related content, whether they turn to the platform for information.
For example, 73% of Instagram users say they’ve noticed funny posts referencing existing events on the site, and two-thirds say they’ve noticed explicit reviews from other people about the news. About a portion (52%) say they’ve noticed news articles before, whether it’s posts, forwards, links, or screenshots, and slightly fewer (44%) see data about a news story as they do on Instagram.
Americans who report receiving data on Instagram on a regular basis see data from other resources on the platform.
Of the consumers of information on Instagram, 72% say they receive news from friends, family and acquaintances, 65% receive news from news agencies or sleuths and 59% receive news from influencers or celebrities.
About a portion of Instagram news consumers say they get data from advocacy teams or nonprofits (52%). Aside from those sources, 64% say they listen to others they don’t know personally.
The majority of Instagram news consumers say they see data that turns out to be wrong on the site at least (76%), adding a quarter who say they see bad data incredibly or quite often.
Perceptions related to misdata on Instagram don’t particularly differ based on party affiliation. About a quarter of Republicans and independents who lean Republican (28 percent), as well as Democrats and Democratic Party supporters (24 percent), say they see data that is wrong on Instagram.
About seven in ten Americans who get data on Instagram (72%) say they believe the platform influences at least some of the news they see there. This includes 27% who say Instagram has a lot of influence on the news they see and 45% who say Instagram has some influence.
About a quarter of Instagram news consumers (27%) say it doesn’t influence much, if any, the news content they see.
Again, there is hardly any partisan difference in the belief about Instagram’s influence on the news. Similar proportions of Republican (29%) and Democratic (26%) news consumers say Instagram has a lot of influence on the news they see.
When asked if Instagram news is exclusive or can be found elsewhere, 21% of Instagram news consumers say that the news they get on the site is usually data they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else.
On the other hand, 34% say that the news they get on Instagram is the one they most commonly would have noticed if they hadn’t used Instagram. About 4 in ten (43%) news consumers say news is a balanced combination of both. .
Among Americans who get data on Instagram, nearly two-thirds (64%) say they feel, at least rarely, exhausted by the data they see on the platform, adding 17% that they feel this way incredibly or quite often.
Instagram news consumers who see at least some political content (i. e. , posts about politics or political topics) on Instagram are much more likely than others to feel exhausted, at least sometimes, by the news they see on Instagram (73% vs. 53%). %).
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© 2024 Pew Research Center