Social media was by far the most popular news platform among 18 to 34-year-olds in the United States, with 47 percent of respondents to a survey held in August 2022 saying that they used social networks for news on a daily basis. By comparison, adults over 65 years old mostly used network news to keep up to date.

The decline of newspapers In the past, the reasons to regularly go out and purchase a print newspaper were many. Used not only for news but also apartment hunting, entertainment, and job searches (among other things), newspapers once served multiple purposes. This is no longer the case, with first television and then the internet taking care of consumer needs once covered by printed papers. Indeed, the paid circulation of daily weekday newspapers in the United States has fallen dramatically since the 1980s with no sign of future improvement.

News consumption habits

A survey on news consumption by gender found that 50 percent of women use either online-only news sites or social media for news each day, and 51 percent of male respondents said the same. Social media was by far the most used daily news platform among U.S. Millennials, and the same was true of Gen Z. One appeal of online news is that it often comes at no cost to the consumer. Paying for news found via digital outlets is not yet commonplace in the United States, with only 21 percent of U.S. consumers responding to a study held in early 2021 reporting having paid for online news content in the last year.

According to a global survey held in the first half of 2021, 45 percent of respondents aged 15 to 24 years old used social media to stay updated about news and current affairs, making social media the most used news source among respondents in that age bracket. By contrast, just 17 respondents aged 40 years and older used social networks as a means of obtaining news, preferring to watch TV news. Newspapers were the least popular news source, followed by friends and family.

According to data gathered in late 2024, 86 percent of adults aged 65 years or over watched news on TV at least sometimes, more than double the share of adults under 30 who did the same. Older news consumers were more likely to turn to print and TV than their younger counterparts, although also increased their news consumption via podcasts.

According to a survey conducted in February 2023, 17 percent of Australian respondents from Generation Z identified television as their primary news source. In contrast, 43 percent of participants from Generation Z stated that social media was their primary source of news.

 News sources in Australia

To stay informed about current events, Australians use diverse media sources, both online and offline. As of 2022, traditional news sources such as television and radio remained important. Approximately 42 percent of Australians accessed news through television on a weekly basis. Social media has also emerged as a prominent news source in recent years. As a result, mobile devices have become a popular medium for accessing information. According to a digital news survey conducted in February 2022, approximately 62 percent of Australian respondents accessed news through their mobile phones. This suggests a shift in news consumption patterns, highlighting the need for news organizations to adapt to the evolving media landscape in Australia.

Trust in Australian media sources

Trust in the news has become a significant concern in Australia. A news consumption survey conducted in February 2022 showed that approximately 41 percent of respondents had confidence in the trustworthiness of news most of the time, while 30 percent of respondents indicated a lack of belief. Low trust can be attributed to factors such as misinformation, biased reporting, and a lack of transparency in news organizations. Building credibility and maintaining accuracy in news reporting will be essential to maintaining public trust in the Australian news landscape as traditional media gradually falls out of favor and digital platforms become more influential.

According to data collected during the first quarter of 2020, adults aged 18 to 34 spent more time browsing the web via smartphone than any other age group in the United States. Overall media consumption was highest among adults aged 50 to 64 during that period.

Traditional media

Traditional media is gradually losing its appeal to younger, more tech-savvy generations. While television consumption is highest among adults who have not grown up with the internet or other digital channels, young Millennials and Gen Z tend to prefer non-linear forms of news and entertainment. Data on the median age of media users in the U.S. showed that the average age of TV viewers and print magazine readers was higher than that of internet users in 2020, and similar generational trends can be observed in many digitally developed markets globally.

Impact of COVID-19 on media usage

The onset of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic boosted media consumption across the United States and worldwide in 2020. While the average time spent with traditional media increased for the first time in over a decade, digital media consumption saw a particularly impressive spike that year due to remote working and schooling setups. In the following years, the gap between traditional and digital media consumption is expected to widen even further.

A 2023 survey across all 27 European Union member states revealed that respondents aged 55 years or above were the most engaged with national political news. A total of 57 percent of adults in this age bracket said they accessed news on the subject in the last week, compared to only 33 percent of those aged between 15 and 24 years old.

A survey held in February 2022 revealed that most consumers never use newspapers as a source of news, and only 21 percent of adults aged 65 or above (those who engage with newspapers the most) reported reading newspapers every day. Newspapers are less popular as a news source than radio, and are also among the least used daily news sources among adults aged 18 years or older.

According to a survey conducted in the second quarter of 2022, global internet users aged between 16 and 24 spent two hours and 53 minutes with social media per day. At the same time they also spent one hour and 23 minutes with games consoles. Social media was the most time consuming media pastime for age groups 16 to 44, while internet user older than that spent more of their time watching linear TV.

Cable TV news consumption is on the decline. Adults aged between 18 and 34 years old were the least likely to use cable TV networks as a source of news, with a survey held in the United States in August 2022 revealing that 45 percent never did so. Younger consumers preferred social media sites for keeping up to date, and whilst their older peers turned to cable news more frequently, network news was still a more popular daily news source.

Falling cable news ratings

Back in 2017, FOX News, the leading cable news network in the United States, had an average of almost 470 thousand viewers in the primetime demo. With the exception of 2020 where news consumption soared during the COVID-19 pandemic, ratings have fallen consecutively each year, and by 2022, FOX’s average viewer count sank to 341 thousand. CNN and MSNBC saw even greater drops in their audiences, with the latter seeing its ratings fall by more than 2.5 times between 2017 and 2022.

Why the drop in ratings?

Cable and satellite TV is no longer the norm: only adults aged 60 or above express a preference for traditional TV over video streaming services and apps, and among certain age groups the share who preferred the latter was over 70 percent. Indeed, a 2022 survey found that the majority of Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X did not have a cable subscription. The main reason for cutting the cord was price, with over a third of adults saying that cable was simply too expensive.

A survey conducted in March 2022 revealed that social media feeds or messaging services were the main news source among Gen Z teens and adults, with 51 percent and 33 percent respectively reporting getting news daily via social platforms. Gen Z teens, those aged 14 to 19 years old, were more likely to use social media for news than their slightly older peers, but consumption was similar across both groups in the sense that news sites were the least popular option and news from search engines was preferred to TV news.

According to a survey conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) in early 2024, 18 percent of children aged 12 to 15 years old engaged with news by reading, watching, or listening to it on a daily basis. Only 10 perecnt of all respondents reported never accessing news, though those aged 13 and 14 years were marginally more likely to avoid news altogether than their slightly younger or older peers.

This graph shows the share of adults watching online or TV news in the United States as of June 2017, by age. During the survey, 35 percent of respondents aged 18 to 24 stated that they watched news online in the United States as of June 2017.

During a survey of adults in the United States in early 2024, it was found that social media was a choice of news source popular among more than half of respondents aged between 25 and 34 years. For the younger Gen Z group, the figure stood at 60 percent at that time.

Data on local news consumption in the United Kingdom found that local groups or accounts on social media and the BBC website or app were the most used online sources of local news as of March 2023, with around 40 to 55 percent of those aged 16 years or older having used these in the month or so running to the survey. Adults aged 55 to 64 years were the most engaged with local news via social media groups and accounts.

During a study fielded in Brazil in 2023, less than 30 percent of responding internet users aged between 10 and 15 years said they read online news. Among respondents of the 25-44 age groups, the share stood at close to 65 percent.

Social media is one of the go-to news sources in the United States – over one third of U.S. adults responding to a 2022 survey got their news from social media platforms every day, and a further 22 percent did so a few times or at least once per week. After the surge in social media news consumption in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, daily engagement fell in 2021, but the increase the following year suggests that daily news access on social networks could continue to grow in years to come.

The most popular social sites for news

An annual report surveying U.S. adults from 2019 to 2022 revealed that Facebook was the most popular social network used for news, followed by YouTube. Important to note here though is that TikTok was not included in the survey question for those years, a platform increasingly popular with younger generations. Whilst the share of adults regularly using TikTok for news aged 50 years or above was just five percent, among those aged between 18 and 29 years the figure was over five times higher.

Meanwhile, Twitter is journalists’ preferred social media site, with the share who use Twitter for their job at almost 70 percent. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter however, some journalists raised concerns about the future of free speech on the platform.

Gen Z and social media news consumption

A 2022 survey found that half of all Gen Z respondents used social media for news every day. Gen Z is driving growth in social media news usage, a trend which will continue if the younger consumers belonging to this generation increase their engagement with news as they age.

A survey on local news consumption in the United Kingdom found that local weather and local news and current affairs were the main types of local news used by consumers aged 16 years or older, although engagement varied substantially by age. Whilst more than 70 percent of adults aged 55 or above read or listened to local news and current affairs, for younger persons aged 16 to 24 years old the share dropped to below 50 percent. Younger consumers were overall the least engaged with local news, regardless of type.

During a survey fielded in Mexico in 2020, 91 percent of respondents aged 18 to 39 years stated that their favorite device to read news online was a smartphone. This device was also the most popular among survey participants between 40 and 65 years old, though with a slight smaller share of respondents. According to the same survey, El Universal was Mexico's best known digital news media.

In 2019, 18-to-34-year-olds in the Netherlands were more inclined to only read daily newspapers on a digital platform than their older counterparts. Online and print news consumption in the Netherlands varied widely by age. Six percent of 13-to-37 year olds, for example, used paper sources only when consuming news. This same percentage was around 15 percent within the age group of 50-64 years. Overall news consumption, be it offline or online, was highest among those 65 years and older.

This statistic displays the behaviors in news consumption by young users on social media in Italy in 2017, broken down by age group. According to survey results, respondents aged under 22 years were more likely to share news with friends and groups if compared to over 30 years users. Overall 58 percent of younger users read or search news on social media, while this share was even higher among the older age group, reaching 61.3 percent.