How Do Americans Engage With News Online?

Photo illustration by Pew Research Center. (Photos via Getty Images) Pew Knight Initiative The Pew-Knight Initiative supports new research on how Americans absorb civic information, form beliefs and identities, and engage in their communities. Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Knight Foundation is a social investor committed to supporting informed and engaged communities. Learn more > Digital devices are now the main way Americans get news. And many U.S. adults don’t just read news online; they also engage with it in various ways. In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey from the Pew-Knight Initiative, 56% of Americans said they had privately chatted about or shared news in the week before they took the survey. Meanwhile, 45% said they had liked or saved posts about news. Those actions are not always totally private, but they’re typically not as visible as publicly posting. Publicly engaging with news online is less common: 26% of U.S. adults said they had publicly posted, shared or commented about news in the prior week. This lines up with our previous findings that most Americans who use social media rarely or never post about political or social issues. About this research This analysis from the Pew-Knight Initiative looks at how Americans engage with news online and how some groups engage differently than others. Why we did this This survey was part of a larger project studying how people participate in public life in different ways – from voting and volunteering to following the news and taking part in religious or community activities. This analysis focused specifically on one of these participation measures: how people consume and respond to online news. How we did this The data for this analysis comes from our Cross‑Sectional Engagement Survey, which polled 5,393 adults from July 9 to Dec. 5, 2025. People could respond online, on paper or by telephone, and we reached out multiple times to people who didn’t initially respond. This was an attempt to reach people who may be less likely both to take surveys and to participate in public life. Read the methodology for more details. Here are the survey questions used for this analysis, the detailed responses and the survey methodology. This is a Pew Research Center report from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Find related reports online at https://www.pewresearch.org/pew-knight/. Related: Why Americans discuss the news – or don’t – with others Overall, Republicans and Democrats, including independents who lean toward each party, engage with news online at similar rates. But in some cases, online engagement with news is more common among those at each end of the political spectrum. For example, 69% of Democrats who identify as liberal said they had privately chatted about news online in the prior week, compared with 54% of Democrats who identify as moderate or conservative. Conservative Republicans were also more likely than moderate or liberal Republicans to have done this (58% vs. 50%). Young adults are more likely than older people to say they privately chat about news or like news posts online. One possible contributing factor is that younger adults are more likely than older ones to use many online platforms. But young adults are not more likely to publicly post about or share news online. Roughly a quarter of adults across all age groups said they had done this in the week prior to the survey. Note: Here are the survey questions used for this analysis, the detailed responses and the survey methodology. Emily Tomasik is a research analyst focusing on news and information research at Pew Research Center. Elisa Shearer is a senior researcher focusing on news and information research at Pew Research Center.