When The Pew Charitable Trusts created Pew Research Center in 2004, we were surveying Americans using the established industry method at the time: calling people on their landline phones and hoping they’d answer. As the Center marks its 20th anniversary this year, survey methods have become more diverse, and we now conduct most of our interviews online.
Public opinion itself has also changed in major ways over the last 20 years, just as the country and world have. In this data essay, we’ll take a closer look at how Americans’ views and experiences have evolved on topics ranging from technology and politics to religion and social issues.
The rise of the internet, smartphones and social media
The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of all sorts of technologies that let people interact with the world in new ways. For instance, 63% of U.S. adults used the internet in 2004, and 65% owned a cellphone (we weren’t yet asking about smartphones). Today, 95% of U.S. adults browse the internet, and 90% own a smartphone, according to our surveys.
Social media was just taking off in 2004, the year Mark Zuckerberg launched “The Facebook” (as it was known then) from his Harvard dorm room. Since then, Americans have widely adopted social media. These platforms have also become a key source of news for the U.S. public, even as concerns about misinformation and national security have grown.
Meanwhile, many traditional news organizations have struggled. In 2004, daily weekday newspaper circulation in the U.S. totaled around 55 million. By 2022, that had fallen to just under 21 million. Newspapers’ advertising dollars and employee counts have also decreased.
In this more fragmented news environment, Americans – particularly Republicans – have become less trusting of the information that comes from news organizations. On the whole, however, more people still say they trust information from news organizations than from social media.
Other emerging technologies
Some technological changes over the past 20 years haven’t been as widely adopted, and a few still sound like science fiction. For example, Elon Musk announced this year that his company Neuralink had implanted a computer chip in a living person’s brain. The chip is intended to allow people to use phones or computers simply by thinking about what they want to do on the devices – an idea that Americans are largely hesitant about.
Other innovations we’ve surveyed about that might have seemed far-fetched back in 2004 include driverless passenger vehicles, space tourism, AI chatbots like ChatGPT, and gene editing to reduce a baby’s risk of developing serious health conditions. Our research suggests that Americans are still getting introduced to and forming opinions of these technologies, so we’ll likely see public attitudes evolve on these and other innovations over the next 20 years.