Americans are becoming more open to the idea that aliens have visited Earth, according to a series of polls that show belief in alien visitation has been steadily on the rise since 2012.

Almost half—47 percent—of Americans say they think aliens have definitely or probably visited Earth at some point in time, according to a new poll from YouGov conducted in November 2025 that involved 1,114 adult participants. That percentage is up from roughly a third (36 percent) of Americans polled in 2012 by Kelton Research, with the exact same sample size. Gallup published polls on this question in 2019 and 2021 that likewise show an upward trend.

Moreover, people seem to be getting off the fence on this issue, one way or the other. Just 16 percent of Americans said they were unsure if aliens had visited Earth in the new poll, down from 48 percent who were unsure in 2012. Meanwhile, even as belief in alien visitation has risen, so has doubt: The new poll shows that 37 percent of Americans said Earth likely hasn’t been visited by aliens, more than double the 17 percent logged in 2012.

It’s impossible to know exactly why Americans have become more receptive to alien visitation from these polls alone; they only include raw statistics, and lack granular details about the specific motivations for the participants’ responses.

“It’s important to note that this is a poll about belief,” says Susan Lepselter, an author and associate professor of anthropology and American Studies at Indiana University who has written extensively on alien beliefs and UFO experiences. “It’s not a poll about experience, contact, feelings—nothing like that.”

“We don’t know what their engagement is; we don’t know if their belief has been life-changing,” she adds. “We just know one thing, which is that the statistics have moved from one set of beliefs to another.”

Of course, it’s still possible—and let’s be real, fun—to speculate on the drivers of the trend. One obvious culprit is a new posture from institutional news sources, such as the US government and legacy media, which have finally started taking unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) seriously.

This shift began with the release of mysterious Pentagon UAP videos by The New York Times in 2017, and has since been accelerated by spate of Congressional hearings, and a NASA independent study on UAP. The newly released documentary The Age of Disclosure, which features claims by former military officials that the US government has covered up evidence of aliens visiting Earth, has supercharged the legitimacy to this once marginalized topic.

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Mobile connectivity across the UK is becoming faster and more responsive on average; a marked gap still persists between the quality of experience in urban and rural areas; and the gap between the best and worst-performing local authorities remains significant, according to research from Ookla.

The analyst’s Speedtest Intelligence report for 2025 takes an overview of mobile network performance across the UK, focusing on outcomes at local authority level and how those outcomes have changed over time.

The study was based on millions of samples from mobile devices connected to a cellular network, comparing results from Q1–Q3 2025 with the same period in 2024. For each local authority, the report considered not only typical speeds, but also the experience of slower connections, and the relationship between population density and mobile outcomes. At UK and country (nation) level, it drew on national aggregate metrics (2025 to date) for the UK, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Fundamentally, the research found that population density correlates strongly with better outcomes, and that practically, the findings illuminate the urban-rural digital divide, showing that where you live in the UK largely dictates your mobile experience.

Analysis of local authority outcomes revealed what Ookla called the “stark” extent of regional variation in and across nations in the UK. Despite the general upward shift in the overall local authority distribution over the past year across key mobile performance indicators, the range remains large and many rural local authority areas are still stuck with not-spots despite the progress of the government’s shared rural network (SRN) scheme. Areas that were strong performers in 2024 generally remained strong, and many of the weakest authorities in 2024 still sit near the bottom of the distribution in 2025.

On a country level, UK mobile performance improved notably between 2024 and 2025, with the national median download speed rising from approximately 55.02Mbps to 63.03Mbps. This represented a year-on-year increase of around 15%. Median upload speeds inched up from 7.80Mbps to 8.21Mbps, while median latency improved marginally from 52ms to 50ms.

England and Northern Ireland saw the strongest gains, while Wales remained the slowest nation and Scotland’s median slipped from 49.13 to 46.05Mbps despite improvements in several local authorities. Overall, though, the UK rates badly compared with European peers such as Germany and the Republic of Ireland.

Drilling deeper, the study showed that the gap between local authorities remained stark. In Q1–Q3 2025, median speeds ranged from just over 10Mbps in the Shetland Islands to just over 100Mbps in Leicester. Around 28% of local authorities had fewer than 60% of test samples meeting a 25Mbps download threshold, indicating persistently poor connectivity for many in the UK.

Including the aforementioned Leicester, top performers included Nottingham, Derby, Bridge of Don, Thurrock and Stoke-on-Trent. These areas typically combine median download speeds in the mid-80s to 100Mbps, roughly three-quarters or more of samples reaching 25Mbps, and relatively strong results even in the slowest 10th percentile (generally around 8–11Mbps).

In addition to the Shetland Islands, the country’s weakest performers included the Isle of Anglesey, Fermanagh and Omagh, Denbighshire, Pembrokeshire, Orkney, and Cornwall. These areas have median download speeds mostly in the mid-teens to low-20s – excluding the Shetland Islands – with less than half of samples reaching 25Mbps and 10th-percentile speeds typically in the 1.5–3Mbps range, highlighting large not-spots for a significant share of users there.

Looking at the companies driving the industry, the study noted that heavy capital spending by the UK’s operators was driving improved outcomes. It added that the UK remains one of only a handful of countries in Europe and globally where at least three operators have “aggressively” deployed 5G standalone across a significant footprint.

Virgin Media O2 has already reported 70% population coverage and BT/EE boasts a similar level. VodafoneThree has committed to invest £11bn in its UK network over the next decade, including £1.3bn of capex in year one.