Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults say social media has been bad for democracy, while negative views have spread in many other countries, according to a new 37-country Pew Research Center survey.
The U.S. figure was 64%, unchanged from a 2022 Pew survey. In 16 of the 26 countries with comparable earlier data, the share saying social media has harmed democracy rose significantly. The figures measure people's assessments, not whether the platforms actually caused changes in democratic outcomes.
Americans' views stand apart from the country median
Across the 37 countries surveyed, the median share saying social media has been bad for democracy was 35%; a median of 55% said it has been good. Those medians describe the midpoint among countries, not a population-weighted share of all people surveyed. The United States was among seven mostly wealthy countries where at least half offered a negative assessment.
In the Netherlands, 70% now say social media has been bad for democracy, up from 54% in 2022. Pew also found more negative assessments in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada. In several lower-income countries, including Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, roughly three-quarters or more said social media has been good for democracy.
Pew's U.S. comparison found that 81% of Americans think access to the internet and social media has made people more divided politically, about the same as the 79% who said so in 2022. There was no meaningful party difference on that question: 83% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 82% of Democrats and Democratic leaners held that view.
Americans were also among the most likely to say internet and social media access makes it easier to manipulate people with false information: 87% said so. That matched the median among high-income countries surveyed.
Respondents also see a source of information and political voice
The survey did not find uniformly negative judgments. A median of 77% across the 37 countries said internet and social media access has made people more informed about current events, while a median of 60% said it has given people a more meaningful voice in politics. At the same time, medians of 79% said it made manipulation with false information easier and 68% said it increased political division.
Younger adults generally viewed social media's democratic effects more positively than older adults, though less than half of U.S. adults under 35 — 44% — said its impact was good. Pew also found younger respondents often recognized both the benefits and downsides, including access to information alongside division and manipulation.
Pew asked about use of five platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Snapchat. Its platform-use chapter found Facebook was usually the most widely used of those five, followed by Instagram. U.S. use of X was 18%, the same as the 37-country median; U.S. use of Snapchat was 26%, compared with a country median of 18%. The list did not cover every social platform, so a respondent who used none of the five was not necessarily offline.
What the survey can and cannot show
Pew surveyed 42,151 adults in 36 countries from Feb. 8 to May 13, 2026, using telephone, face-to-face or online interviews. The U.S. democracy questions came from a separate, nationally representative survey of 3,507 adults conducted March 23-29; its full-sample margin of sampling error was plus or minus 1.9 percentage points. U.S. platform-use figures came from another survey of 5,511 adults conducted Jan. 30-June 18.
The methodology describes weighting and country-specific designs. Neither the country medians nor U.S. results are estimates for New York or the Finger Lakes. Changes in attitudes over time also do not establish what produced those changes.
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