Americans are becoming increasingly convinced that aliens have visited Earth

Americans have become More open to the idea of ​​it Aliens have visited Earth, according to a series of polls showing that belief in alien visits has been steadily increasing since 2012.

Nearly half of Americans (47%) say they believe aliens have definitely or probably visited Earth at some point, according to a new study. Poll from YouGov Conducted in November 2025 and involving 1,114 adult participants. This percentage is higher than nearly a third (36 percent) of Americans Surveyed in 2012 by Kelton Research, with exactly the same sample size. Gallup Published polls About this question in 2019 and 2021 which also show an upward trend.

Moreover, people seem to be moving away from the fence on this issue, one way or another. Just 16% of Americans said they were unsure whether Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials in the new poll, down from the 48% who were unsure in 2012. Meanwhile, even as belief in extraterrestrial visitation has grown, skepticism has also increased: The new poll shows that 37% of Americans said it was likely that Earth had not been visited by aliens, more than double the 17% reported in 2012.

It’s impossible to know exactly why Americans have become more receptive to space visits from these surveys alone; It includes only raw statistics, and lacks precise detail about the specific motivations for participants’ responses.

“It’s important to note that this is a survey about faith,” says Susan Lipselter. author He is an associate professor of anthropology and American studies at Indiana University who has written extensively about alien beliefs and UFO experiences. “It’s not a poll about experience, or connection, or feelings, nothing like that.”

“We don’t know what their engagement was, and we don’t know if their beliefs changed their lives,” she adds. “We only know one thing, and that is that the statistics have moved from one set of beliefs to another.”

Of course, it’s still possible – and let’s be real, Hazar– To speculate on the drivers of this trend. One obvious reason is the new attitude of institutional news sources, such as the US government and legacy media, which are finally starting to take unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) seriously.

This transformation began with the release of Mysterious Pentagon UAP videos by The New York Times in 2017, and has accelerated ever since A wave of congressional hearingsand A Independent NASA study on UAP. The newly released documentary The era of disclosurewhich exposes claims by former military officials that the U.S. government has covered up evidence of aliens visiting Earth, has bolstered the legitimacy of this previously marginalized topic.