Study: Younger Adults are Less Likely to Follow the News & More Likely to Trust Information from Social Media

Study: Younger Adults are Less Likely to Follow the News & More Likely to Trust Information from Social Media

“According to a study by Pew Research Center, young adults follow the news less closely than any other age group. In fact, the likelihood of seeking out news is proportional to age, with older Americans following the headlines the most closely.

When it comes to accessing news on social media, however, those trend lines are flipped. Seventy-six percent of Americans ages 18-29 say they get their news from social media at least sometimes, while only 28% of those age 65 and older do.

It’s no surprise, then, that Pew found that young adults are more likely to get news incidentally – that is, without looking for it. When it comes to political news, 70% of young adults say they get it because they happen to come across it (from social media, especially Instagram and TikTok), compared with 30% who seek it out. Those 65 and older, however, are more likely to get news because they’re looking for it.

Because younger Americans get their news incidentally from social media, they’re often getting information pushed to them by digital algorithms and filtered by their favorite news influencers. According to the Pew study, if they already have a “background” with the news influencer and already “agree with that person,” then they’re more likely to trust them to provide information.

This trend is concerning because it means that younger adults are more likely to live in information bubbles, receiving information that already agree with their world view and provided by people who are often not trained journalists intent on providing fact-based and minimally biased information (read our analysis about news influencers here). According to the study, U.S. adults under age 30 say they are more likely than any other age group to trust the news they get on social media and less likely to trust information from local and national news organizations.

Here at Ad Fontes Media, we encourage news consumers of all age groups to break out of their information bubbles as much as possible. That means intentionally seeking out news sources rather than relying on internet algorithms to feed you information. We also recommend that you take a look at sources from the top to the bottom and from the left to the right portions of the Media Bias Chart® so you can see how different news sources are reporting on the same story (our weekly Topic of the Week exercises are an excellent way to get an overview of the varying media landscape).

Start a habit of shattering your information bubble with the February edition of the Media Bias Chart® for Web/Print that we’re releasing today. This chart features 127 of the 2,850 web/print sources our team has rated so far. You’ll notice that this chart contains a variety of sources of online information: local websites, national news organizations, Substacks, newsletters and wire services. We know it’s hard to read all of the source logos on the chart, so we’ve provided a list of the 127 sources here. (We’ll be back with charts that focus on podcasts and TV/video sources later this month).

To vary your media diet, we recommend choosing sources you haven’t read before from the top middle of the chart, from the left side, and from the right side. Sources in the green box (top middle) of the chart have been rated by our team to be minimally biased and to provide fact-based information. You will notice a difference in how the news is reported by comparing green-box sources with opinion sources on the left and right and with any sources that fall in the bottom portion of the chart.”