Elon Musk, 54, bought Twitter in October 2022 and quickly renamed the social media platform X.
However, while he paid a mouthwatering $44 billion for the honor, the platform didn’t take off with users, with many leaving the site. Since that time, X has lost more of its popularity as it falls behind its rival platform, Reddit. According to new research, X was already declining in popularity, according to Pew Research Center, that examined trends between 2021 and 2025. As more people leave, Reddit is growing in popularity.
While Elon Musk made a wide range of changes to Twitter, including the change of name to X, and the introduction of his controversial AI bot Grok, he still hasn’t been able to restore its popularity. Meanwhile, under the care of the tech billionaire, the platform has also faced allegations that it openly promotes damaging and hateful content, leading to advertisers taking their business elsewhere.
Reddit is more popular than X? pic.twitter.com/iVtpeFir68
— Fred Lambert (@FredLambert) November 28, 2025
According to Pew, only 21 percent of American social media users now use X, as compared to 25 percent in 2021. During that same period, Reddit has grown in popularity, attracting many “Redditors” to share their content with images, text, videos and links, that its community vote up and down according to their opinion.
Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards, dubbed “subreddits” while Reddit administrators, mostly unpaid volunteers, moderate the communities. To get an idea of the change, Reddit has now jumped to 26 percent from its previous 19 percent, with roughly 50 percent of 18-29 year olds saying they use it.
When things took a turn on X, a new site was launched, known as Bluesky, set up in a similar way to the original Twitter. Meanwhile, YouTube continued in popularity, used by 84 percent of adults, while it dominates both 18-29s at 95 percent and 30-49s at 92 percent. This is followed by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook at 71 percent and Instagram at 50 percent.
Moreover, TikTok is growing its audience, especially with under-30s, while WhatsApp increases in popularity with 32 percent of US adults, up from 24 percent in 2021. According to the report, social media veterans, like YouTube (2005), Instagram (2010) and Facebook 2004 benefit from users habit. Meanwhile, X (2006), and Reddit (2005) attract more specific and smaller communities.
Rounding off, Threads attracts 15 percent, Twitter copycat Bluesky is 6 percent and Donald Trump’s Truth Social remain popular with younger social media users.
To get the results, Pew surveyed 5,022 US adults between February 5 and June 18, 2025, using a nationally representative method. However, Pew does caution that the 2021 data collection was phone only, while in 2025 the fieldwork included mail, web and phone, using address-based sampling.
Of interest to know, debate has started on the platform as to whether it should be relabeled Twitter with one of the previous blue bird logos. Meanwhile, many users admit they have never called it anything other than Twitter.
All are good except 2023 https://t.co/825gE9cs7h
— Masked (@vs988456) November 28, 2025
Readers, which social media platforms do you prefer using, whether for business or personal use? Have you personally left X? Let us know by dropping a comment below.
