Women in minority as news consumers and news influencers on YouTube
Among YouTube news influencers, 68% are men and only 28% are women. And a slightly larger share explicitly express a right-leaning political orientation (28%) than a left-leaning one (21%). Another 46% don’t express any clear political orientation, according to data from Pew Research Centre. And the news consumption differs by gender. News consumers on YouTube are more likely to be men than women (57% versus. 42%).
“The vast majority of news influencers on YouTube (88%) have not worked in the news industry. Yet most still find ways to generate income from their work: 80% of YouTube news influencers monetise their content in some way, whether through subscriptions, donations or merchandise.”
YouTube’s role as a place to find news has increased in the last few years and it is now one of the top destinations for people looking for news in the US with around a third of adults saying they regularly get news there. The share who get news has risen from 23% in 2020 to 32% in 2024, data from the centre shows.
Alphabet-owned YouTube has just celebrated its 20th birthday. It is the most widely used of all the online platforms in the United States, according to the data.
In 2020, news consumers were more likely to regularly get news from 21 year old Meta-owned Facebook (36%) than YouTube (23%). But as of 2024, US adults are just as likely to get news from YouTube (32%) as they are from Facebook (33%).
Around a quarter of adult YouTube users (24%) say they regularly get news from news influencers on any social media site. 44% of the influencers in a Pew sample are on YouTube, though most news influencers on YouTube also have a presence on several other sites.
More US adults use YouTube than any other online platform in the research centres studies. As of 2024, 85% of adults say they ever use YouTube. That exceeds the share who say they ever use Facebook (70%), Instagram (50%) and other social media sites and apps.
An overwhelming majority of teens also use YouTube. Nine-in-ten teens ages 13 to 17 say they ever use YouTube, though this is down slightly from 95% in 2022. And most teens go on YouTube daily (73%). This includes 15% who say they use the platform almost constantly.
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