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A couple of months ago, a paper came out that looked at “Sharing without clicking” on social media. We’ve all done it. It’s faster and easier to click that little “Repost” button than it is to read the article.
The authors got data from Facebook. They quickly found the 75% of URLs are shared without being clicked. Note that just because someone clicked a link does not mean they read it. So the 75% value is probably an underestimate of how many people only read the title.
The bulk of the paper is trying to break down what people are more likely to share without clicking, focusing on political affiliation, which is less interesting for poster creators.
But the point remains that an enormous number of people are making decisions about what to engage with based purely on the title. It reinforces the importance of putting real effort into crafting your title.
Sundar SS, Snyder EC, Liao M, Yin J, Wang J, Chi G. 2025. Sharing without clicking on news in social media. Nature Human Behaviour 9: 156-168. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02067-4