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

TL;DR

The paper analyzes shifts in the U.S. social media landscape between 2020 and 2024 using nationally representative ANES Time Series data. It documents a gradual contraction in overall platform use and a rise in non-use, accompanied by aging and modest demographic diversification of platform audiences, with TikTok and Reddit growing modestly while Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, and Twitter/X lose ground. Politically, Twitter/X experiences a dramatic realignment—from Democratic-leaning posting in 2020 to Republican-leaning engagement among posters in 2024—while posting on other major platforms remains broadly Democratic-leaning but with narrower gaps; affective polarization remains tightly linked to political posting across platforms. The study uses harmonized weights, engagement-weighted measures, and descriptive analyses to reveal a shrinking, more fragmented online public sphere where highly polarized users dominate visible discourse despite overall declines in participation, highlighting implications for democratic deliberation and public polarization.

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.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Shifts in overall social media engagement, 2020--2024 (ANES, weighted population estimates with 95% CIs). The share of respondents reporting no platform use increased clearly between 2020 and 2024, while most major platforms—YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter/X—lost reach. TikTok and Reddit expanded modestly, indicating consolidation around short-form video and discussion-based platforms.
• Figure 2: Directional shifts in partisan balance across major platforms, 2020–2024 (ANES, weighted). Twitter/X and Reddit show the strongest Republican gains, while Democratic overrepresentation persists—though more moderately—on TikTok and Reddit.
• Figure 3: Shift in partisan composition of users, visits, and posts on Facebook and Twitter/X, 2020–2024 (ANES, weighted). Data on posting and use frequency are available for Twitter/X and Facebook only. Values show the difference between the shares of Democratic and Republican voters (Dem – Rep, percentage points). User-level estimates represent the average partisan balance among all platform users, while visit- and post-weighted measures emphasize the composition of more active participants.
• Figure 4: Posting frequency rises sharply with affective polarization on both platforms. Respondents expressing stronger in-party warmth and out-party hostility post more often about politics. Average posting rates decline in 2024 for all groups, but the positive slope remains—especially on Twitter/X, where polarization is most predictive of activity.
• Figure 5: Association between partisan affect and platform engagement (ANES 2020 vs. 2024, weighted). Facebook shows stable Republican-leaning engagement patterns, whereas Twitter/X shifts from a Democratic to a Republican gradient in both use and posting. Polarized users continue to dominate visible political activity even as overall participation declines.