Facebook is seen as the archetype of a social media platform, but others are more divisive
Social media is a ubiquitous part of everyday life now, but the classification can seem a bit muddled sometimes. News outlets often describe online platforms as being social media that do not appear at first glance to be so.
The issue is not restricted to the media. Indeed, part of the reason this survey is possible is because YouGov itself includes some of the more potentially dubious examples in our standard question about what social media platforms people use every month!
So what platforms ‘count’ as social media, according to the British public?
Facebook may not have been the first social media platform to rise to prominence, but it fostered a new era and achieved a level of influence and ubiquity that its predecessors had not. For perhaps this reason it tops our list, with 96% of Britons considering it to be ‘social media’.
Veteran platforms X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram are also seen as social media by 90-91% of people, while newcomer TikTok also earns that label among 84%, as does Snapchat at 72%.
But there are some platforms that are often described as social media where the public doesn’t seem too sure that that is an accurate label.
Is WhatsApp social media?
At first glance WhatsApp would appear to be more of a messaging app than a social media platform, and indeed this is presumably why it is the entity on our list Britons are most likely to say is not social media. More than half of Britons (53%) say that WhatsApp does not count as social media, although 42% still do.
Among WhatsApp users there is an even greater tendency to say that it is not a social media platform – 58% see the service as something else, while only 39% agree with the label.
Is YouTube social media?
Video-sharing platform YouTube often gets included on lists of social media entities. While this may traditionally have been one of the more questionable inclusions, the introduction of YouTube Shorts in 2020 brought the platform closer in function to TikTok, which the large majority of Britons do consider a social media platform.
For the time being, however, the most common view is that YouTube is not social media, although the results are close. Half of Britons (50%) say they do not consider YouTube to be social media, but almost as many (45%) do think it counts.
YouTube users themselves are even more closely split – among those who have watched videos on the platform in the past 30 days, 50% say it is not social media, but 47% say that it is.
Is LinkedIn social media?
LinkedIn’s status proves to be the most divisive. Around four in ten Britons (43%) do see LinkedIn as a social media platform, while 41% do not.
LinkedIn users themselves as less confused. Six in ten of those who used the platform in the month preceding the survey (60%) see LinkedIn as social media – although 37% nevertheless do not.
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