Democrats and Republicans can finally agree on something: Social media cannot be trusted. Just days before the start of the Democratic primaries, Pew Research Center's recent survey showed that respondents from both sides of the aisle do not trust social media to provide reliable information on political and election news.

After surveying 12,043 US adults, Pew determined that the majority of respondents do not trust platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn as news sources. Facebook (59 percent), Twitter (48 percent), and Instagram (42 percent) were the least-trusted platforms.

These results aren't surprising, considering the country's inability to decipher truth from fake news as well as Mark Zuckerberg's open animosity towards his critics. But what's truly surprising is how social media's trustworthiness has become a bipartisan issue.

The survey breaks results down by political leaning to show who cares more about which platforms. When it comes to Facebook, 59 percent of Democrat-leaning respondents and 62 percent of Republican-leaning respondents deemed the platform untrustworthy.

Similarly, 46 percent of left-aligning respondents and 51 percent of right-aligning respondents distrust Twitter. For Instagram, 41 percent Democrats and 45 percent Republicans don't trust the platform.

This is wildly different from Pew's report on US media polarization, where it was shown how much more right-leaning respondents trust only Fox News, while left-leaning respondents trust CNN and network news equally.

It seems that while Americans can't agree on which media outlets to trust, they can agree that social media is not a great place to get information about politics.

Further Reading

• UK Regulator Gets New Powers to Take on Facebook, Twitter
• Twitter Simplifies Conversations By Threading Replies
• Facebook and Instagram to Limit Coronavirus Misinformation
• Zuckerberg: I Don't Care If You Like Me, I Just Want To Be Understood
• More in The Why Axis
• More in Social Media

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