How Young People Consume the News
It is tempting to condense down the habits of young people into catchy partisan-sounding clips, but when you dive into the research of how young people get their news today, in particular Gen Z, the results are fascinating and surprising. We know that the younger generations are more engaged than ever before in politics, activism, and their communities. It's even been reported that 53% of 18-29 year olds plan to vote in the 2024 presidential election and the way Gen Z consumes news media really reflects that high level of engagement. Even though the mediums may have changed, the interest in current events and the news of the day remains high for the younger generation. Here’s a glimpse into what that news consumption looks like in practice.
Gen Z lives online
Newspaper routes have gone the way of the landline, with most young people today getting their news from online sources. As the first true digital natives, over 50% of Gen Z teens and adults report that they get their news exclusively from their smartphones. With tiny computers at our fingertips, finding a physical newspaper is wholly unnecessary and Gen Z reportedly spends almost half of their waking hours online.
Social media is everything
If it’s not on social media, did it even happen? That certainly seems to be the sentiment and with 35% of Gen Zers spending over four hours a day on social media, it’s basically their digital playground. Unsurprisingly, social media is also where Gen Z goes for current events with about one-third of adults under 29 regularly scrolling TikTok for news. The benefit of social media as a news platform is that complex topics are often broken down into bite-size clips and easy to understand language. A major con? User-generated content means that not everything that is labeled as “news” is trustworthy. McKinsey & Company explained how Gen Z sees the news like this, “The news is serious business, while news can be the latest on the Pete/Kim romance or cool science facts. While 39 percent of people under 24 prefer to get the news from social media, 34 percent seek out trusted news sites or apps when it comes to current events.” Said another way- big news media isn’t dead for Gen Z, but it is not the first stop.
Gen Z is using their listening ears
Podcasts continue to soar in popularity and in 2023, there were an estimated 24 million monthly American Gen Z podcast listeners. Over the past five years, monthly podcast listening among Gen Z has surged by 57%, with 47% of Gen Zers (around 24 million people) tuning in over the past month. Among these listeners, 66% use podcasts to stay informed on the latest topics, and 61% listen to stay updated on social issues. The most interesting takeaway from this particular study is that, despite the common trend of multitasking while consuming content, 82% of Gen Z listeners reported that they listen to podcasts without doing anything else.
TL;DR: (Too long; didn’t read) Gen Z is still reading the news. They are assessing the news they consume for trustworthiness but are drawn to engaging and user-generated content. And of course, Gen Z is not a monolith- differences in media consumption vary widely from person to person, but distilling down some of the wider trends brings one thing into clear focus: Staying current on the news is a priority for Gen Z, but they are going to do it on their own terms.