Signing you in

Pew found that, when ranked, the median (the middle country) is more than half (55 per cent). India, at 66 per cent, was among the most positive, level with South Africa. Fewer than one in four Indians called social media bad.

Pew interviewed 3,566 Indian adults face-to-face between February 8 and April 27 — before the protests against the Election Commission of India in September and October. The survey cannot say how those weeks changed anyone's mind. Pew also cautions that its 2023 figures for India are not comparable. So, there is no telling whether Indians have grown warmer or cooler.COMPARED TO REST OF WORLD

The countries most positive about social media are mostly poorer ones. In Nigeria, top of the list, eight in 10 called it good for democracy. Singapore, the richest country surveyed, is the exception, tied for second. On the other end, more than a quarter of the Dutch and more than one in three Americans agreed.

"In nations with lower gross domestic product per capita, people tend to be less negative about social media," the report's authors wrote. India fits that pattern. Its income per person, $2,702 in 2025, according to the World Bank figures Pew used, is among the lowest of the countries surveyed. Fewer than one in four Indians call social media harmful, close to the 24 per cent median of the five countries nearest to India in income. In seven countries, all of them wealthy, most people said it had done more harm than good.

India's answer comes with an unusual number of shrugs. More than one in 10 Indians said they did not know, or would not say. That’s more than twice the share in the median country (one in 20). Only Israel and Sri Lanka had more. Even if all of them had called social media bad for democracy, the yes side would still lead, 66 per cent to 34 per cent.WHAT INDIANS THINK

Pew asked whether the internet and social media had made people more informed, more able to have a say in politics, more divided or easier to fool with false information.

On all four, good and bad alike, Indians were less likely than people in the typical country to say "more". Nearly two in three Indians said people were better informed; in the median country, more than three in four did.

More than half said people had become more divided, against more than two in three. And more than three in five said people were easier to manipulate with false information, the lowest share of all 37 countries, where the median was nearly four in five.

Some of that gap is uncertainty. Between one in 10 and one in six Indians did not answer these questions.

The result: a country more likely than most to call social media good for democracy, and less likely than most to say it has changed people.WHO SAYS YES?

"Young adults in most nations are especially likely to believe social media has a positive effect on democracy," the report's authors wrote. In India, nearly three in four of those aged 18–34 said so, compared with half of those aged 50 and older. Nearly seven in 10 of those aged 35–49 agreed.

That 24-point gap is among the largest of the 23 countries where Pew found a clear difference by age. Only Britain's, at 29 points, was bigger.PLATFORMS INDIANS USE

Pew asked respondents which five platforms they use. Facebook was the most used in India — by more than two in five adults. In the median country, nearly seven in 10 use it. Fewer Indians than people in the typical country also use Instagram (nearly two in five, against more than half) and X (fewer than one in 10, against nearly one in five). Snapchat, used by nearly one in five Indians, matches the median.

Dipu Rai is an investigative and data journalist based in New Delhi focusing on data-driven stories on finance, health, politics and environment. He is also actively involved in analyses and visualisations of data at India Today's Data Intelligence Unit (DIU).

Dipu is well-versed in SQL, Python, R, Tableau and produces prototype visualisations quickly as per requirement. He is specialised in dealing with a variety of datasets with parsing, scraping and cleaning. Doing Spatial analysis is his hobby, and he frequently uses location intelligence platforms like Carto and QGIS.

After completing the master in economics, Dipu has started his career as a business journalist. He has more than ten years of experience in broadcast, print and digital platforms.

Dipu's work has sparked several financial investigations and won some of journalism's highest honours. He was awarded the Redink Award, in 2015 for financial crime reporting. He has translated Raymond Williams's book 'Television' in Hindi. His hobbies include reading codes, learning new visualisation techniques. In his spare time he likes to read books, listen to music and watch films.