Social media is named as a most trusted source by 20 per cent of respondents and as the main way they find new Christian content by 51 per cent. The same gap appears for YouTube.
Social media sits at the bottom of the trust ranking in this survey. Asked which sources they trust most for faith, inspiration and Christian information, 20 per cent of respondents name it, against 92 per cent for the Bible and 38 per cent for Christian organisations.
It is also the most common way people come across something new. Asked how they usually discover new Christian content, 51 per cent name social media, ahead of YouTube at 36 per cent and friends or family. YouTube shows the same shape at a smaller scale: named as a trusted source by 26 per cent and as a channel used by 50 per cent.
Discovery and credibility have separated. The place where something is encountered is not the place that is believed, and the two are drifting further apart rather than converging.
For anyone publishing, this has an awkward practical consequence. Withdrawing from the low-trust channels removes the main route by which people find anything at all. The workable response is not to abandon them but to recognise that a first encounter there does not carry the authority the source itself would carry elsewhere.
This pattern is not specific to Christian audiences. Research on news consumption in the general population describes the same tension. The report sets out both alongside each other, with the question wording and bases for each.
Source: European Christian Media Survey 2026