Professions, politics, and pop culture.
Social media reflects and affects where we work, who we vote for, what we purchase, and what we do in our free time.
Since we last examined the social media space in 2018, social media has deviated from its original photo-sharing roots to incorporate short-form video, AI, gaming, dating, and shopping, which raises a question—is social media still social?
We explore this question and the user experience of social media apps in our latest benchmarking survey.
On the heels of what may become known as the “Social Media Olympics,” viewership of the international competition was up 77%, largely attributed to the loosened social media regulations that allowed athletes to share their experiences of the iconic games.
Social media remains a juggernaut in politics as well, being used heavily by candidates on all sides as things heat up before the 2024 presidential election. Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is leaning heavily into social media trends like “brat summer,” while the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, spoke with Elon Musk as millions of viewers tuned into the live feed on X, formerly Twitter.
Social media’s influence isn’t going unnoticed by governments, who are wary of its reach and influence. The European Union sent a warning letter to Elon Musk before his interview with Donald Trump, reminding him that X is subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the bloc’s relatively new law regulating illegal content and disinformation on large social media platforms. In the U.S., details concerning the U.S. government’s role in coercing platforms to censor information have emerged. There is bipartisan support for banning TikTok in the U.S. over concerns the Chinese government may use it to spy on U.S. citizens. Brazil recently banned X, fining its citizens for attempting to access it.
Artificial intelligence is unsurprisingly making its mark in the social media sphere, as fears of deepfakes and misattributed content begin to materialize. Some of the first large-scale deepfake scams have surfaced in recent months, with Prince William seemingly endorsing a crypto platform, and Elon Musk promoting a radical investment opportunity.
Social media titans like Meta are bolstering their response to this type of content through recent policy changes on digitally altered media, requiring new “AI info” labels.
It’s no surprise, then, that the landscape of social media has evolved quickly since our 2018 benchmark, encouraging us to update our benchmark data. We used MUiQ to benchmark the desktop website and app experience of six popular platforms:
- Snapchat
- TikTok
- X (formerly known as Twitter)
We recruited 324 participants in August 2024 to reflect on their most recent experience with one of the platforms they had used in the past year. While the sample size isn’t large relative to the billions (with a b!) of people who use social media, it’s large enough to detect patterns between platforms and to compare to our historical sample.
Participants in the studies answered the eight-item SUPR-Q® (including the Net Promoter Score) and questions about their prior experience. In particular, we were interested in exploring the quality of the user experience, users’ reasoning behind social media use, the proliferation of AI, levels of trust, and social media’s impact on mood and self-esteem. (Full details are available in the downloadable report.)
Why People Use Social Media
Are social media apps still social? We asked respondents to select which activities they engage in while using the platform. A selection of activities is shown in Table 1. The full activity list is available in the downloadable report.
| Stay informed about other people in your life | Keep in touch with friends | Watch short-form videos | |
|---|---|---|---|
| FB | 66% | 79% | 38% |
| IG | 55% | 43% | 57% |
| 37% | 19% | 4% | |
| Snapchat | 52% | 78% | 36% |
| TikTok | 32% | 18% | 91% |
| X | 55% | 43% | 57% |
| Average | 49% | 46% | 48% |
Table 1: A selection of three commonly reported social media activities.
While participants still report using social media to stay informed about people in their lives (49%) or keep up with friends (46%), platforms seem to be moving more toward impersonal content consumption. As shown in Table 1, across all platforms a substantial 48% of respondents reported watching short-form videos. This aligns with findings that users are primarily using social media for entertainment (60%) and distraction (44%).
There is, however, variation between apps. Facebook and Snapchat are still firmly planted in the “social” aspect of social media, with 79% of Facebook users and 78% of Snapchatters stating they use it for keeping in touch with friends.
Alternatively, Instagram and TikTok lean more towards content, with 91% of TikTok users and 57% of Instagram users reportedly using the app to watch short-form videos (Figure 1). This is an especially large jump for Instagram, which introduced Reels only four years ago in August 2020. In open-ended responses, users expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of posts from friends or non-influencers.
Figure 1: Example of a short-form TikTok video.
X is by far the platform used most for staying informed about the news (68%), with other platforms like Facebook and Snapchat landing significantly lower at 17% and 10% respectively. While X is more popular for news consumption, respondents mentioned particular dissatisfaction with misinformation, political content, and general negative social interactions. While there was a time when social media was used to promote political discourse, users reported that all social media sites are now seen as a suboptimal medium for expressing political opinions (only 9% reported using it for this purpose). Meta, which once promoted this type of content in the past, has deliberately deprioritized political content.
Similar efforts may be driving low numbers across the board, with 5% of Instagram users expressing political opinions and only 2% of LinkedIn users.
Verbatim comments:
- “The staggering amount of misinformation; the harassment, dogpiling, and bullying; the fact it now actively facilitates extremist hate and bigots more than ever before.” — X user
- “Too much advertising, political content, and posts on my newsfeed from people I don’t know.” — Facebook user
- “My home page mostly has random posts of people I don’t follow so it’s hard to even see my friends’ posts.” — Instagram user
Quality of the Social Media User Experience
TikTok users rated the platform high across many of the metrics we collected, including usability, preferred content, mental health impact, and brand attitude. Conversely, X scored low in all these categories.
Content is king, and given the high overall ratings, it’s not too surprising that TikTok’s content was rated as both more original and more relevant than other platforms. However, X’s content was rated almost as high in originality compared to TikTok, suggesting that X continues to fill a need.
The generally favorable attitudes toward TikTok likely make the case for banning TikTok in the U.S. harder.
UX of the Mobile App
Participants who used apps to access their social media completed a simplified version of the Standardized User Experience Percentile Rank Questionnaire for Mobile (SUPR-Qm) and the Net Promoter Score for mobile.
SUPR-Qm
SUPR-Qm scores for the six social media apps hovered around average (53 on a 100-point scale), with TikTok being the only app that significantly surpassed the others with the highest SUPR-Qm score (63). X fell below average for social media apps with the lowest score (47).
Net Promoter Scores for Mobile
Mirroring a similar trend to the SUPR-Qm, TikTok led the pack with an NPS of 23%, while X fell significantly behind at −51%.
The average NPS for all apps was a paltry −21%, with TikTok having the only positive Net Promoter Score. Why do apps that are so ubiquitously used have such low Net Promoter Scores?
An examination of the open-ended responses suggests that their ubiquity might be why users do not feel compelled to recommend:
“Most phones have it already.” — Facebook user
“All my friends already use it.” — Snapchat user
There were also concerns about the negative societal effects of social media:
“I don’t think anyone should start using Instagram. It’s best to spend as little time on social media as possible.” — Instagram user
“I don’t like using it if I don’t have to so I wouldn’t recommend it.” — X user
“I mostly dislike LinkedIn for what it stands for and not how it functions.” —LinkedIn user
Desktop Website UX
Most people in our sample reported accessing social media via mobile app, though a smaller contingent still uses their desktop, especially for LinkedIn. Of the respondents, 92% reported using the mobile app, whereas only 58% used the desktop website. This lower usage on desktop may explain some of the low SUPR-Q scores, which averaged at the 4th percentile. Websites generally had lower usability scores and SUS scores, which were all hovering around the historical average of 68.
Usability Across Platforms
LinkedIn participants reported struggling with the app’s navigation and usability. Many reported difficulties accomplishing basic tasks, including searching for jobs, sending messages, and updating profile information. TikTok participants also struggled with video lagging, bugs, and technical issues.
Verbatim comments:
- “[Difficulty] updating my resume and other activities involving looking for jobs. Indeed is much easier.” — LinkedIn user
- “It often does not register my uploaded videos and I have to re-upload 2 or 3 times for it to work.” — TikTok user
- “Sometimes it doesn’t work and it won’t load. It’s also much harder to scroll than just swiping up and down.” — TikTok user
Artificial Intelligence and Deepfakes
In the age of artificial intelligence, the ability to morph and distort physical, audible, and written information means such content is skyrocketing in popularity (Figure 2). It’s no surprise then that these drastic changes are hurtling into our news feeds as quickly as they’re developing in real time.
Figure 2: An example of a fake LinkedIn profile (created for this article with some generative AI content).
More than half of respondents reported seeing AI-generated content (58%), misleading generated content (57%), and deepfakes (32%).
The highest percentage of misleading generated content was on Facebook (70%) and Instagram (66%). AI-generated content was reported as most prevalent on TikTok (72%) and X (79%).
LinkedIn and Snapchat had the lowest reports of GenAI content, with 52% and 42% respectively reporting no experience seeing GenAI content, deepfakes, or bots. This is perhaps due to the professional nature of LinkedIn and the close-friend, ephemeral nature of Snapchat.
While most users are encountering AI-generated content on social media, the majority of respondents (76%) reported not using AI to generate content themselves. The largest percentage of people using AI-generated content was on Snapchat (20%), likely due to the wide array of AI-powered offerings such as AI snaps, AI captions, and AI profile backgrounds.
Distrust, Control, and Regulation
Users have long struggled with the push-and-pull of a trust/distrust relationship with social media. From ongoing legislative battles to docudramas like The Social Dilemma, users have questioned how much personal information to divulge to these platforms.
Table 2 shows that while respondents don’t think the government should necessarily intervene, most platforms besides LinkedIn should regulate themselves more than they currently do. Interestingly, TikTok had the lowest percentage of users agreeing the government should regulate the platform.
Respondents also emphasized across the board that user accounts should be banned if they incite violence.
| Govt Should Regulate | Self-Regulate | Regulated More | Ban Violent Accounts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FB | 25% | 49% | 45% | 83% |
| IG | 20% | 46% | 38% | 75% |
| TikTok | 14% | 51% | 39% | 89% |
| X | 23% | 63% | 54% | 84% |
| Snapchat | 18% | 50% | 42% | 92% |
| 15% | 19% | 13% | 88% | |
| Average | 19% | 47% | 39% | 85% |
Table 2: Regulation preferences by platform (percentage of participants who agree or strongly agree).
Table 3 shows the percentage of respondents who agreed with various statements about the platforms. The fewest users reported trusting the content on Facebook (11%) and X (13%). Trust scores have been low since we began benchmarking social media platforms in 2012. Facebook has the highest proportion of users who perceive a significant risk of getting scammed (66%), perhaps due to Facebook Marketplace, the classified ad section of the platform. Likewise, few users trust Facebook (0%), LinkedIn (8%), or X (9%) with their credit card number. A surprisingly large number (40%) of users believe that Snapchat is being used to facilitate illegal activities. (Full details are available in the downloadable report.)
| Giving Credit Card | Content is Trustworthy | Scam Risk | Illegal Activities | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FB | 0% | 11% | 66% | 34% |
| IG | 14% | 18% | 41% | 27% |
| TikTok | 16% | 32% | 47% | 12% |
| X | 9% | 13% | 48% | 32% |
| Snapchat | 12% | 16% | 46% | 40% |
| 8% | 48% | 35% | 6% | |
| Average | 10% | 23% | 47% | 25% |
Table 3: Trust ratings by platform (percentage of participants who agree or strongly agree).
With concerns about trust comes questions related to parental control over social media, a topic hotly debated nationwide. Respondents generally felt that teenagers are the youngest demographic that should have access to social media with or without parental consent. Most reported that the appropriate age to access social media without parental consent was from 16 (34%) to 18 (27%), ultimately clarifying opinions about having children or adolescents on social media.
Mood and Self-Esteem Effects
Social media is blamed for poor mental health. However, our analysis suggests social media may have a more nuanced effect on how people believe social media affects their mood and self-esteem. Figure 3 shows that respondents were more likely to say that social media has a positive rather than negative effect on their mood. TikTok users reported nearly four times more positive rather than negative effects. On the other hand, X participants were almost three times more likely to report that using the platform had a negative effect on mood versus a positive effect (34% vs. 13%). Is the bad mood from X due to Musk’s takeover? Our 2018 analysis suggests it may be more than just new-owner headaches. In 2018, Twitter also had the worst negative mood rating (24%), although in 2024 the percentage of users saying it worsened their mood rose to 34%—a movement in the wrong direction. It’s likely that the type of content, such as political discourse and dialog-based format, has a large impact on how users feel its usage affects their mood.
Figure 3: Effect on mood by platform (percentage selection of Agree or Strongly Agree).
While social media companies could improve their platforms for users in a few distinct ways, it seems that much of the negative experience is driven by the users themselves. Social media acts as both a mirror and a megaphone, reflecting and amplifying the world around us. So, perhaps the platforms are not inherently bad, but rather a reflection of who and where we are today.
Summary
Our analysis of the user experience of six social media websites found:
- Social media remains social, but the introduction of short-form video is transforming the platforms into an avenue for escapism and content consumption.
- TikTok dominated the UX metrics we collected, significantly outperforming other apps on usability, preferred content, and mental health impact.
- X scored the lowest across most measures, with the worst user experience, less preferable content, and more deleterious effects on mood.
- AI and deepfakes have begun permeating UX content, though average users do not yet engage in much AI content creation.
- With or without parental consent, users believe teenagers are the youngest demographic group that should be allowed to access social media.
- Contrary to popular opinion, people reported that social media tends to have a modest positive effect on their mood and self-esteem for most apps, especially TikTok. X is the exception, tending to worsen mood, which may be due to the nature of its content.
For more details, see the downloadable report.
