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Almost all (92%) of Americans say they spend time using social media on a typical day, including 73% who spend more than an hour. And far more of this social-media-obsessed country say they'd prefer social media posts to be arranged chronologically rather than sorted by an algorithm (46% vs. 26%). Another 4% say they would prefer posts to be manually curated, and 23% aren't sure.
This preference for chronological feeds, where posts are displayed in the order they were published, is strongest among older adults. Those 65 and older prefer chronological order to algorithm-based order by a margin of 60% to 15%, while 45- to 64-year-olds have a softer preference (48% vs. 21%), as do 30- to 44-year-olds (45% vs. 30%). Adults under 30 are more likely to prefer algorithm-based feeds, where posts are displayed based on factors such as the user's interests and behavior or the popularity of the content. 31% of 18- to 29-year-olds prefer chronological feeds and 43% prefer algorithmic feeds.
Support for chronological feeds is also strongest among those who don't use social media much, while the heaviest users are more likely to want algorithms. Among people who use social media less than one hour per day, 54% prefer chronological feeds and 18% prefer algorithmic feed. Those who use social media for one to two hours per day have similar preferences (52% vs. 19%). But those who use social media three to four hours per day are more closely divided (45% vs. 32%), and those who use social media at least five hours per day are more likely to prefer algorithmic feeds (38% vs. 44%).
Some social media platforms give users a choice between chronological and algorithmic feeds, while others have only one. Users of the heavily algorithmic TikTok are more likely than those who use other apps to prefer algorithmic feeds (41% prefer chronological and 42% prefer algorithmic). In contrast, Reddit users are more likely to prefer chronological feeds (51% vs. 30%). The comparatively few users of the newer social media app Bluesky are strongly pro-chronological (76% vs. 15%, though this has a higher margin of error than other networks because of the small sample of Bluesky users).
Preference for chronological feeds exceeds that for algorithmic feeds among users of Facebook (49% vs. 26%), YouTube (49% vs. 29%), and Instagram (47% vs. 32%). But these apps are used by large shares of the population: 75% say they have recently used Facebook, 62% have recently used YouTube, and 44% have used Instagram. In other words, the population of people who use these big platforms is less distinct from the population of all Americans than are some of the smaller apps.
Among heavy social media users, who average more than four hours per day of social media use, there's close division about feed-sorting preference among those who use YouTube (43% chronological and 40% algorithmic) and Facebook (38% vs. 41%), and a preference for algorithmic feeds among users of Instagram (36% vs. 47%), X (38% vs. 47%), and TikTok (35% vs. 52%). Users of each of these platforms who spend a lot of time on social media are more pro-algorithm than lighter social media users on the same platforms.
Methodology: The August 10 - 12, 2026 poll was conducted among 1,116 U.S. adult citizens. Respondents were selected from YouGov's opt-in panel to be representative of U.S. adult citizens. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, U.S. region, 2024 presidential vote, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. 2024 presidential vote, at time of weighting, was estimated to be 48% Harris and 50% Trump. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent's most recent answer given around November 8, 2024, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (31% Democratic, 33% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4.0%.
Image: Getty (hapabapa)
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