Pew Research Center surveyed 42,151 people across 37 countries between February and May 2026, producing one of the most comprehensive snapshots of global attitudes toward social media and democracy. The headline finding: in most countries with trend data, the share saying social media is bad for democracy has increased significantly since 2022 or 2023. In Germany, the "bad thing" share leapt from 41% to 61%. In the Netherlands, from 54% to 70%. In Hungary, from 22% to 42%. The United States sits at 64% negative — the highest among surveyed nations — but American opinion hasn't actually moved since 2022. What's happening is convergence: the rest of the wealthy world is catching up to American skepticism. The seven nations where majorities call social media bad for democracy — the U.S., Netherlands, France, Germany, U.K., Canada, and Australia — are all high-income countries. This is not a universal shift. It is a wealth-correlated one. In lower-income nations, the picture inverts. In Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Thailand, roughly three-quarters or more say social media has been good for democracy. Across all 37 nations, a median of 55% still view social media positively for democracy versus 35% negatively. The global median tells a story that the wealthy-nation headlines obscure: most of the world's population still sees platforms as net democratizers. The survey reveals a striking paradox in how people process platform effects. A median of 77% say the internet and social media have made people more informed about current events. Sixty percent say these tools have increased people's ability to have a meaningful political voice. But 79% — nearly the same proportion — say these tools have made people easier to manipulate with false information and rumors. People simultaneously credit platforms with informing and empowering them while recognizing the manipulation infrastructure. Age splits reinforce the complexity. In the U.K., 60% of adults 18-34 say social media is good for democracy versus 31% of those 50 and older. In the U.S., the gap is 44% to 28%. Younger cohorts who are most embedded in platform ecosystems are also most positive about their democratic effects — a pattern that could mean either generational optimism or generational capture. Two notable outliers puncture the wealth-equals-skepticism pattern. Israel (22% negative) and Singapore (22% negative) are high-income nations where very few see social media as harmful to democracy. These exceptions suggest the relationship isn't simply about wealth but about the specific political context in which platforms operate — whether they're perceived as threatening an existing power structure or supplementing one. The structural question Pew's data raises but cannot answer: is rising skepticism in wealthy democracies a healthy immune response to genuine platform harms, or is it a narrative shaped by legacy media institutions and political elites who face competition from these platforms? The 20-percentage-point shifts in countries like Germany and Hungary in just four years suggest something is driving opinion formation at speed — and that something is itself part of the information ecosystem being judged.
