Striking Tech Findings From 2019

Every year, Pew Research Center publishes hundreds of reports, blog posts, digital essays and other studies on a wide range of topics. At the end of each year, we compile a list of some of our most noteworthy findings. These are a few striking findings related to tech policy:

• A majority of Americans do not think it is possible to go about daily life without corporate and government entities collecting information about them. Americans widely believe at least some of their online and offline activities are being tracked and monitored by companies and the government. It is such a common condition of modern life, in fact, that roughly six-in-ten US adults say they don’t think it is possible to go through daily life without having data collected about them by companies (62% say this) or the government (63%).
• US newspaper circulation has fallen to its lowest level since at least 1940, the earliest year with available data. Total daily newspaper circulation – print and digital combined – was an estimated 28.6 million for weekday and 30.8 million for Sunday in 2018. Those numbers were down 8% and 9%, respectively, from the previous year and are now below their lowest recorded levels (though weekday circulation first passed this threshold in 2013).
• Despite the economic troubles facing the news industry, about seven-in-ten Americans (71%) believe their local news media organizations are doing well financially. This belief persists even though only 14% of US adults say they personally have paid for local news within the past year, whether through subscriptions, donations or memberships. When asked why they don’t pay for local news, around half of non-payers (49%) point to the widespread availability of free content.
• The most active 10% of adult Twitter users in the US produce 80% of all tweets sent by these users.
• A single person watching YouTube videos for eight hours a day with no breaks or days off would need more than 16 years to watch all the content posted by just the most popular channels on the platform during a single week.