Underrepresented and 'social first', the relationship between young people and news
This is the picture of the relationship between young people and the world of information contained in the analysis 'How young people get their news' by the Reuters Institute
Key points
They inform themselves on visual social media such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, they feel under-represented by traditional media, they have no preclusions in the use of artificial intelligence. This is the snapshot of the relationship between young people and the world of information contained in the analysis "How young people get their news" by the Reuters Institute, which confirms the "upheaval in 10 years of the media diet" of this generation of social natives who have "moved away from TV, the press and news sites to become social first".
Analysis in 9 countries, Facebook down
The analysis was conducted in nine countries - UK, USA, France, Germany, Denmark, Italia, Spain, Japan and Brazil - on a sample of 18-24 year olds. It thus emerges that 39% get their information on social media (in 2015 it was 21%); 24% on news sites (it was 36%), 21% from TV (compared to 28%), 4% via radio (6%) and another 4% from print media (6%). Four visual platforms are now the most used by this age group to read the news: Instagram (30%), YouTube (23%), TikTok (22%) and X (20%). Facebook has fallen from 53% to 16% in the last nine years.
Todcasts
59% listen to podcasts monthly (only 18% in the news category). On social media, young people say they pay more attention to individual creators (51%) than to traditional news brands (39%). About two-thirds (64%) read news daily, but more randomly than intentionally, by scrolling through social: only 14% of 18-24 year olds say that the main way to access news is by going directly to a news site or app, much less so than through social (40%) or search engines (26%).
The use of artificial intelligence
Some 15% use artificial intelligence to access news on a weekly basis compared to 3% of the over-55s. The generation surveyed for the report also has a positive attitude towards AI-assisted journalism (43%) and is inclined to use this technology as an aid to explaining complex news stories (48%) or summarising (43%).
Beware of mental health
Furthermore, only a third (35%) of the young people in the sample - compared to 52% of the over-55s - say they are 'very' or 'extremely' interested in news, especially politics; boys are more interested in science and technology, girls in mental health news. 32% think it 'doesn't make sense for the media to be neutral on certain issues' such as climate change or racism. And 31% believe that the age group to which they belong is not sufficiently covered by the media, perhaps also because of the 'lack of younger people in the newsroom'.
