Question: There's a survey on chess.com, [Do your friends play chess?](http://www.chess.com/survey/do-your-friends-play-chess), and the results aren't very encouraging. Personally, very few of my friends play chess.

Then I read this question: [What's the most prestigious chess competition, broadcasted on TV?](https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/1009/whats-the-most-prestigious-chess-competition-broadcasted-on-tv) Chess was once broadcast on TV; is it getting less popular?

How many people actually attend the tournaments and watch them? I watch bowling, snooker, even darts on sky sport. Eurosport broadcasts sports like [Biathlon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biathlon); could chess be less popular than that? Really?

Is FIDE trying to make it more popular?

Answer: 
according to wikipedia, the USCF has experienced strong membership growth in recent times:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Chess_Federation>

However, another angle would be to look at google search trends, and this suggests it is less popular, at least since 2005. For example, "chess", "learn chess" and "chess rules", "chess tutor", "chess books", "chess openings", "chess endgame", and "play chess online" show a downward trend. "how to play chess" shows a slight downward trend. 

Overall popularity to other things could be compared by looking at the number of facebook likes that it has, although this estimate could be confounded by many different factors. You could at least get a rough comparison to other hobbies, though.
The USCF and FIDE have scholastic programs designed to get kids - boys and girls - into chess. This is one way they are trying to popularize it.