Overview

The use of social media is becoming a feature of political and civic engagement for many Americans. Some 60% of American adults use either social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter, and a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project finds that 66% of those social media users—or 39% of all American adults—have done at least one of eight civic or political activities with social media.

66% of social media users have employed the platforms to post their thoughts about civic and political issues, react to others’ postings, press friends to act on issues and vote, follow candidates, ‘like’ and link to others’ content, and belong to groups formed on social networking sites.

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About the Survey

These findings come from a nationally representative survey of 2,253 adults ages 18 and older that was conducted between July 16 and August 7, 2012. The survey included 900 interviews on cell phones and was conducted in English and Spanish. Some 1,209 of the respondents use either a social networking site such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ or use Twitter. Most of the results in this report are based on that sub-population of social media users. The margin of error on that sample is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.