Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020-2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization

TL;DR

This study examines the decline and fragmentation of U.S. social media platforms from 2020 to 2024, highlighting demographic shifts, changing political alignments, and increased polarization in online discourse.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how social media use, demographics, and political polarization have evolved in the U.S. over recent years using recent nationally representative data.

Findings

Overall social media use has declined, especially among the youngest and oldest Americans.

Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter/X have lost users, while TikTok and Reddit have grown modestly.

Political engagement on platforms has shifted, with Twitter/X experiencing a significant partisan flip.

Abstract

Using nationally representative data from the 2020 and 2024 American National Election Studies (ANES), this paper traces how the U.S. social media landscape has shifted across platforms, demographics, and politics. Overall platform use has declined, with the youngest and oldest Americans increasingly abstaining from social media altogether. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter/X have lost ground, while TikTok and Reddit have grown modestly, reflecting a more fragmented digital public sphere. Platform audiences have aged and become slightly more educated and diverse. Politically, most platforms have moved toward Republican users while remaining, on balance, Democratic-leaning. Twitter/X has experienced the sharpest shift: posting has flipped nearly 50 percentage points from Democrats to Republicans. Across platforms, political posting remains tightly linked to affective polarization, as the most partisan users are also the most active. As casual users disengage and polarized partisans remain vocal, the online public sphere grows smaller, sharper, and more ideologically extreme.