With age comes social media mania.
Older generations are driving political polarization and conspiracy theories on high web platforms, whereas Zoomers are typically extra issue-focused moderately than on partisan warfare, a sweeping new examine discovered.
Socialprofiler, a man-made intelligence platform, combed via the highest social media websites and analyzed some 756 million profiles to conclude that older generations are extra outspoken about partisan politics on-line than youthful ones.
“I’d say numerous the findings are very unconventional,” Socialprofiler CEO Tony Noskov admitted to The Publish. “Political dialogue isn’t actually widespread amongst youthful generations. It’s largely about activism, nonpolitical activism.”
The examine assessed posts that customers of various age teams work together with essentially the most on X, Fb, Instagram, and TikTok to assist attain its conclusions.
Whereas Gen. Z steadily engages with left-leaning political content material and progressive social points, it was the Millennials and Gen. Xers who had been extra slanted towards conventional partisan content material, the examine discovered.
“This means that the loudest political debates happen not among the many youth themselves, however amongst their dad and mom and older siblings, who use social media platforms as areas for ideological expression and partisan discourse,” the examine defined.
The findings from Socialprofiler’s first-of-its-kind social media examine observe with different anecdotal findings that older Individuals might be too on-line and go down rabbit holes of social media conspiracies.
A Talker Analysis survey of two,000 American adults age 50 and older, commissioned by Centrum Silver in September, discovered that the typical older American spent a collective 22 hours per week in entrance of some kind of display, together with scrolling via social media.
One other examine out College of Colorado Boulder discovered adults aged 55 and older are considerably extra prone to share political misinformation than youthful social media customers. As Individuals age, they change into extra partisan and people beliefs can muddy their on-line judgment, the November 2025 examine discovered.
With age got here a rise in political polarization and conspiracy theories about UFOs, aliens, the Illuminati, the earth being flat, different information and extra, the brand new Socialprofiler examine discovered.
In the meantime, Zoomers are typically extra issue-focused and dabble in esoteric content material like tarot studying, witchcraft, hypnosis and spiritism.
“This means that totally different types of escapism and different worldviews attraction to totally different age cohorts, moderately than representing a easy substitute of conventional religion with scientific rationalism,” the examine mentioned.
When requested why the hole between youthful and older generations on conspiracy theories exists, Noskov admitted that “We don’t precisely know,” however teased that his firm is planning to conduct further analysis on that sooner or later.
Republicans typically drew far more sturdy engagement on the highest social media platforms total, however Democrats unsurprisingly fared higher amongst youthful cohorts.
Zoomers appeared particularly targeted on points like LGBTQ+ rights and local weather change.
One particular instance examined was the Black Lives Matter motion, which the examine discovered misplaced engagement with its youthful viewers to non-political content material.
“Even amongst actions that originally attracted youthful, politically engaged customers, there could also be a pure lifecycle or shift towards depoliticization,” the examine famous.
Though polls have typically proven a decline in faith amongst youthful Individuals, Socialprofiler discovered that some spiritual actions, equivalent to Islam, are making inroads with the youth.
Socialprofiler theorized that faith is slowly being changed “by different types of metaphysical rationalization of the world.”
The examine additionally concluded that X is the highest platform for politics, information, and science, whereas Instagram dominated in way of life and aspirational tradition content material, and TikTok was house to the youth and id expression.
Socialprofiler’s “2025 State of U.S. Social Media” examine is its inaugural report, primarily based on two years of increase its analytic database of social media platforms.
Accounts which can be non-public weren’t assessed, although Socialprofiler was capable of study from folks’s interactions with content material on different social media platforms.
“We glance throughout platforms, every thing from LinkedIn to Twitter to Fb to Instagram, and we seemed throughout all of the platforms,” Socialprofiler COO David Marohnic defined. “So normally most individuals could have no less than a type of public.”
The corporate estimates that roughly 65% of social media profiles are public, whereas 35% are non-public, although that varies by platform.
