• by Joe Mandese , Yesterday

Pew Research Center this morning updated its estimates for social media usage among American adults, finding that YouTube still dominates with 84% of the population, followed by Facebook (71%), Instagram (50%) and TikTok (37%).

That stat is based on Pew's survey among those Americans who say they ever use each of those platforms, but another Pew survey finds much lower penetration among those who regularly use them -- daily or several times a day.

And while I know we live in an increasingly hyper-fragmented media world, where old standards for reach and frequency no longer seem to apply, but eyeballing Pew's updates made me think that the most-distributed social media platform's coverage of America is only about as big as cable TV was in its prime (about 84% in 2010). Putting aside the role of vMVPDs, cable's coverage is now about a third of the population, and according to Nielsen, about 22% of TV viewing share.

I'm pointing this out, because I think we need to reframe how we think about reach when a platform like TikTok is only even used by about a third of Americans, yet attracts a disproportionate share of ad industry mindset, including among planners and buyers.

That said, there is an even more compelling stat to justify its attention, which is the share of younger Americans who are spending their time there (see below).