For a platform that everybody claims to have quit, Facebook is astonishingly resilient. A whopping 71 percent of American adults still use the site — and more than half check it daily — according to a recent Pew study, cementing it as one of the few constants in an otherwise shifting social media landscape.
And it’s not alone. YouTube is the only platform even more ubiquitous than Facebook, with 84 percent of adults saying they use it — a figure that, like Facebook’s, has barely shifted in years — and nearly half doing so every day. They’re also the only two platforms with universal reach, being used by a clear majority across all age brackets surveyed, from teens to retirees.
From there, things start to splinter. Instagram — the only other platform used by at least half of adults — shows a much sharper age divide than YouTube or Facebook. Four-fifths of adults ages 18-29 said they use it, compared to just 19 percent of those ages 65 and over. This holds for almost all platforms, with younger users reporting higher usage. There are similar, though less dramatic, gaps for TikTok, Reddit, and Snapchat. The lone exception is Donald Trump’s Truth Social, which skews older and attracts a proportionally higher share of adults 50 and over.
There’s a political dimension, too. Truth Social and Bluesky — both relative newcomers in the social media world — show unmistakable partisan leanings, likely magnified by their relatively small user bases of just 3 percent and 4 percent of adults, respectively. Truth Social skews heavily Republican, with 6% of Republican or Republican-leaning respondents saying they use it compared to just 1 percent of Democrats. Bluesky shows the reverse: 8 percent of Democrats report using it, versus only 1 percent of Republicans.
Pew’s numbers also point to a broader realignment on X, formerly Twitter. Two years ago, the platform was favored by Democrats, with more than a quarter reporting they used it compared to a fifth of Republicans. Today, the numbers have basically flipped, with 24 percent of Republicans now reporting to use X, compared to 19 percent of Democrats.