A new study from the Pew Research Center noted that out of 25% of adult Americans using Twitter, 33% tweet about politics, up from 13% in 2019. The report highlighted that while only 24% of American Twitter users are aged 50 or above, they produce a massive 78% of the political content on the platform.

Older users also tweet about politics more (36%) than their 18-to-49-year-old counterparts (7%).

Image Credits: Pew Research

41% of surveyed users said that a lot of the content they see on Twitter is political, and 36% of them said their feed is somewhat political.

When it comes to posting, users said only 12% of their posts are political in nature. In fact, only 8% of the stuff they tweet are original thoughts related to politics, as compared to 44% retweets, 42% quote tweets, and 26% replies.

The survey also dived into habits of US-based Twitter users on their political engagement online (tweeting about political an issue) and offline (signing a petition). 58% of the users said they engaged in both forms, and 34% said that they engaged in only offline political activities.

Image Credits: Pew Research

The study noted some Twitter-related trends among users from different political ideologies, too. Democrats were more active in posting on the social network about politics in the 30 days before the survey as compared to Republicans (30% vs. 17%). They also believe that the platform is more effective at raising awareness about an issue than their Republican counterparts (28% vs. 17%).

While Pew Research's new report revealed many data points, here are some other significant observations:

• Democrats said they are more likely to follow accounts that share their political ideologies than Republicans (40% vs. 20%).

• Democrats also had a higher percentage when it comes to disagreeing with a few or none of the tweets they see (33% vs. 16%).

• Americans who tweet more about politics are more likely to talk about those topics with others once in a week (55% vs. 33%).

• They had also contributed to a political campaign one year before the survey. (33% vs. 16%).