Some 233 million — or 81% of Americans aged 12 and over — consumed online audio in the last month. Furthermore, some 219 million Americans over the age of 11 — or 76% — listened to online audio in the last week.
That’s the big takeaway from The Infinite Dial 2026, released on Thursday by Edison Research at SSRS — with support from satellite radio purveyor SiriusXM Media.
Presented by Megan Lazovick, Vice President of Edison Research at SSRS, with James Cridland, Editor of Podnews, the study also finds that Americans age 55+ are driving the most recent increases. Monthly online audio listening among this group jumped from 52% in 2024 to 70% in 2026, a gain of nearly 20 percentage points in just two years.
Meanwhile, new heights are being seen with podcast consumption, as some 230 Americans aged 12 and older (80% of the population) has ever listened to or watched a podcast.
Additionally, 167 million Americans over the age of 11 (58%) have consumed a podcast in the last month, also an all-time high. Some 68% of 35-54-year-olds have consumed a podcast in the last month, while 130 million of Americans age 12+ (45%) have consumed a podcast in the last week.
Among Americans age 12+, some 57% have both listened to and watched a podcast.
The latest Infinite Dial also looked at social media platform preferences. TikTok is now the most-used social media platform among Americans ages 12-34, preferred by 29% of that group. Facebook is used most often by 40% of social media users and is dominant among those 55 and older. X (formerly Twitter) skews male and ages 35-54, while Snapchat‘s audience is overwhelmingly under 35 years of age.
How huge is YouTube? Nine in ten Americans age 12+ have ever used YouTube; 84% use YouTube monthly and 78% use YouTube weekly.
The data is based on a national survey of 2,050 individuals ages 12 and older conducted in January. Approximately half were drawn from the SSRS Opinion Panel, recruited through probability sampling methods including random-digit dialing and address-based sampling. The sample was weighted to represent the U.S. 12+ population according to census data.
