TikTok Reaches 65% of US Under-30s, Just 11% of Over-65s
Pew's 2026 survey of 5,511 US adults finds social media reach almost frozen: YouTube 84%, Facebook 70%, Instagram 51% and TikTok 37%, with X the one big platform losing ground. The real differences are by audience, with TikTok used by 65% of under-30s and 11% of over-65s.
01Telemetry
Key findings at a glance
- 84%of US adults use YouTube, the most widely used platform in the survey
- 70%of US adults use Facebook, little changed from 71% in 2025
- 51%of US adults use Instagram
- 37%of US adults use TikTok, unchanged from 2025
- 18%of US adults use X, down from 21% in both 2024 and 2025
- 65%of 18 to 29-year-olds use TikTok
- 11%of adults aged 65 and over use TikTok
- 79%of 18 to 29-year-olds use Instagram
- 65%of adults aged 65 and over use YouTube, the platform that reaches the most older adults
- 77%of women use Facebook
- 63%of men use Facebook
- 51%of college graduates use LinkedIn
02Scope
What the report covers
Pew Research Center published Americans' Use of Social Media in 2026 on 19 October 2026, the latest edition of a platform-tracking series that runs back to 2012. It is one of three tech adoption fact sheets released together (the others cover home broadband and mobile devices), all drawn from Pew's National Public Opinion Reference Survey of 5,511 US adults, fielded between 30 January and 18 June 2026. Respondents were asked whether they ever use each of 11 platforms, so the figures measure reach, not frequency or time spent.
Reach barely moved. YouTube (84%) and Facebook (70%) still lead, followed by Instagram (51%), TikTok (37%), WhatsApp (33%), LinkedIn (31%), Snapchat (26%) and Reddit (25%), and every one of those is within a point of its previous reading. The exception is X, which fell from 21% in 2024 and 2025 to 18%. TikTok's growth has stalled: it rose from 33% in 2024 to 37% in 2025 and stayed there. Nextdoor (18%) is back on the list for the first time since 2021, while the fact sheet carries no 2026 figure for Threads or Bluesky, which stood at 8% and 4% in 2025.
The differences that matter sit inside the population. Age is the sharpest divide: 79% of 18 to 29-year-olds use Instagram against 21% of over-65s, TikTok runs from 65% to 11%, Snapchat from 56% to 4% and Reddit from 40% to 6%. YouTube is the platform that holds the most older adults, at 65% of over-65s, with Facebook close behind at 59%, and Facebook actually peaks among 30 to 49-year-olds (78%), not the young. Women are more likely than men to use Facebook (77% against 63%), Instagram (56% against 45%), TikTok (43% against 31%) and Snapchat (30% against 21%), while men lead on X (23% against 14%) and Reddit (27% against 23%). Education and income split the professional platforms: 51% of college graduates use LinkedIn against 13% of those with a high school education or less, as do 45% of adults in households earning $100,000 or more against 18% of those under $30,000. TikTok runs the other way, used by 43% of adults with a high school education or less and 28% of graduates.
03Briefing
What this means for UK marketers
These are US figures, so treat them as a pattern rather than a UK media plan. The UK picture from Pew's 37-country survey, covered in our report on UK social media usage, has the same shape: Facebook is still the broadest platform, and the younger apps barely reach older adults. The two surveys ask different questions, so compare the gradients, not the percentages.
Choose platforms by who buys, not by what is new. If your customers are over 50, YouTube and Facebook are where the reach is. TikTok reaches 11% of US over-65s and Snapchat 4%, so a youth-first channel plan simply misses them. If you sell to under-30s, Instagram and TikTok come first, with YouTube close to universal at 95%. Facebook's peak among 30 to 49-year-olds (78%) and its female skew (77% of women) explain why it remains the workhorse for family, home and local-service brands, which is where most of our Facebook and Instagram ads work for UK businesses starts.
Flat reach changes the job. When no major platform is adding users, growth has to come from creative, targeting and share of attention among people already there, not from being early to a new network. TikTok holding at 37% for a second year is the clearest sign of a mature market.
For B2B, LinkedIn is narrow but concentrated: 31% of all adults, rising to 51% of graduates and 45% of higher-income households. That is the audience most B2B services sell to, so a modest headline reach is no reason to drop it.
Two platforms deserve a rethink. X fell three points to 18%, the only major platform to drop by more than a point, so any plan that leans on it for reach needs a second channel. Reddit reaches 40% of under-30s and 36% of graduates, and forum threads are where people ask for recommendations in the same plain language they now use with AI assistants, which is why community answers feature in our guide to getting your brand mentioned in ChatGPT and Perplexity. Social is also a news channel now: a companion Pew survey from August 2026 found 53% of US TikTok users regularly get news there.
04Method
How they got the data
Check the method before you quote the number.
The National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS) is Pew's benchmark survey of US adults, conducted for it by SSRS. SSRS mailed invitations to 19,860 households drawn as a stratified random sample of US addresses from the US Postal Service delivery file, and asked the adult with the next birthday to take part. People could answer online, on paper or by phone, in English or Spanish: 2,473 responded online, 2,694 on paper and 344 by phone, for 5,511 completed surveys and an AAPOR response rate of 30%. Results are weighted to population benchmarks from the 2024 American Community Survey and the National Health Interview Survey, plus 2024 presidential election turnout and vote choice. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points, and wider for subgroups. Full details are in Pew's NPORS 2026 methodology summary.
The platform question (whether people ever use each website or app) was asked of internet users, 5,313 respondents, and the published shares are of all adults, with non-users counted as not using each platform. Ever use is a reach measure: it says nothing about how often people open an app or how long they stay. Pew changed how it runs this survey in 2023 (from phone to web and mail) and again in 2024 (adding phone), so the long trend line is not like for like, while the 2024, 2025 and 2026 readings share the same design. Question wording and every trend reading are in the survey topline.
