Was Donald Trump’s landslide victory thanks in large part to a growing trend in the way Americans get their news? Was 2024 the first election in American history in which the old-guard legacy media’s influence was, er, trumped by social media news influencers?

It’s hard to know with any certainty, but a new Pew Research Center survey finds that an increasing number of American adults, especially young adults, are getting their news from social media influencers.

Across all adult age groups, 21% get their news primarily from social media influencers, with that number jumping to 26% for adults aged 30-49 and 37% for adults aged 18-29. Furthermore, a majority of these news influencers are male and lean conservative. Male news influencers outnumber female hosts by a 2:1 margin. And across all major social media platforms — including Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok — conservatives outnumber leftists, with the exception of TikTok, where roughly 28% lean left and 25% lean right.

The most popular social media sites for news influencers are X and Instagram, with a whopping 85% of them using X. In this respect, it looks like Elon Musk’s purchase of X as a free-speech marketplace has paid off in a big way.

Another interesting factor in the rise of new media is the fact that just 23% of these social media influencers have prior experience in legacy media. The vast majority of them are citizen journalists or social commentators. Here, the big names include Joe Rogan, whose podcast with President-elect Donald Trump has topped 50 million views on YouTube, as well as Tim Poole, Theo Von, and Ben Shapiro, to name but a few.

With males being the majority of these social media influencers, as well as males being the majority of their audience, it comes as little surprise that younger men are becoming politically more conservative than their female counterparts. Pew found that 63% of these influencers are male, while just 30% are female.

A significant loss of trust in legacy media is also spurring this growth in new media. Younger Americans — digital natives who lack the historical connection and commitment to legacy media that older generations have — are eager for sources they find more genuine and trustworthy than the mainstream media. They see the blatant bias in mainstream media, along with its gaslighting of the public. This increasing exposure to the MSM’s bias and fake news creates a greater market opportunity for new media.

How will legacy media respond? Will they take a hint, do some serious soul-searching, and embrace the hard truth that they’ve lost the trust of the vast majority of the American public? Furthermore, how will the growth of new media reshape journalism? Who will become the new gatekeepers? The inside track will be with those who consistently commit themselves to reporting the facts and truth regardless of political affiliation or social policy concerns.

In other words, legacy media can only earn back the public trust when activists stop masquerading as journalists.