Can Social Media Platforms Build Digital Trust?

Trust is key when it comes to social media platforms. Digital trust exists when a user is confident that their chosen social media platform will protect their data and secure their content.

So how are social media platforms doing in providing digital trust? The results of Insider Intelligence's annual survey seem to shed light on this issue. Curious about the results, right? So let's take a quick look at it.

Also See: What are the Causes of Failure of Startups?

Survey Results: Trust In Social Media Platforms Has Declined In The Last 3 Years

This survey was conducted between May and June in 2022 and surveyed approximately 2,225 adults living in the United States. All of these users were between the ages of 18 and 75. Therefore, they actually represent the vast majority of the US population. It should be noted that trust in social media platforms has fallen in the last three years, as seen from the results.

Facebook is a platform that seems low in trust. In 2020, about 30 percent of Facebook users stated that they could trust the platform. Now it has fallen by as much as 18 percent. This shows how unreliable Facebook has become for users, according to the results. However, Facebook is not the only social media platform that has seen a decline in how much confidence users have in it.

The second least trusted platform was Twitter. And only 23 percent of respondents said they thought they could trust this social media platform. Twitter also saw a similar decline in credibility. But in fact, the decline in these numbers is even more severe than Facebook.

Rising social media star TikTok is also facing many problems on this front. In 2020, about 41 percent of TikTok users said they could trust the platform. By 2022, this had dropped to 24 percent.

Only 25 percent of Instagram users stated that they trust the platform. This platform has also experienced a serious decline. But we see that Instagram is trusted by slightly more users than TikTok.

With this survey, we see that users' trust in social media platforms is actually low.