Trust moved to people.

In November 2024, Pew Research Center published a survey of 10,000 Americans and an analysis of 500 creators who talk about current events. The headline finding: 21% of US adults regularly get news from creators on social media. Among those under 30, nearly four in ten: 37%.¹

And 77% of those creators have no tie to any news organization. People talk, and other people listen.

What changed

Trust used to travel through an institution: the newspaper, the university, the publisher. They checked, filtered and signed off. Today a lot of it goes straight from person to person, with no stop in between.

And people who follow these creators feel it works for them. In the same survey, 65% say it helped them better understand what's happening around them.

And it isn't only news

Pew's survey is about news, but it's hard not to see the same thing in other fields: cooking, parenting, business, fitness. When people look for how to do something, they often choose who to learn from before they choose what.

People learn from someone they trust. And trust is built slowly, post by post, from a question someone asked and an answer they got.

People ask less who approved it, and more whether they trust who's saying it.

And the other side

Trust that travels directly has a cost. Without an editor and without a check, mistakes travel fast too. And most of the creators in the survey have no journalism training.

Institutions bring something one person on their own doesn't always bring: verification, depth and accountability over time. The interesting question is how to hold both: the trust of a person, and the seriousness of someone who checks themselves.

What this says about you

If people already ask you, they've made the hard choice: they decided you're the one worth learning from. That's not a small thing, and it doesn't keep itself.

We used to ask who signed off on it. Now we ask whether we know them. You already have the second part.