The new report from the Media Authority states that young people mainly use social media to stay informed of what is going on in the world. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and WhatsApp in particular are their most important news sources. This behavior is fundamentally different from the behavior of older news consumers and has consequences for the way young people stay informed and for the way they build relationships with trusted news brands.
The study by the Dutch Media Authority (CvdM) is called: ‘Young people, News and Social Media, eand look at the future of news.’ For the study, 2,000 young people (between the ages of 16 and 24) were asked about their behavior. To put the results into perspective, a group of 500 elderly people (40 to 65 years) were also asked about their news consumption.
The research shows that the lion’s share of young people (78%) use social media for news gathering. They assume that the news automatically appears in their timelines, especially via Instagram (65%), TikTok (40%), YouTube (38%), WhatsApp (34%) and Snapchat (23%). Facebook only plays a limited role as a news source for young people (19%), just like X (formerly Twitter with 15%) and LinkedIn (10%).
Traditional news channels are missing out on young people
The report also asked which news sources young people use. In addition to social media (78%), the immediate environment of friends and family is an important source of news (66%). More traditional news sources, such as news sites or apps (48%), TV news (46%), digital paper newspapers (16%) and magazines (8%) are used less by young people. Many young people indicate that they actually combine different channels. What is striking about the graph below is that the behavior of older news consumers shows an opposite picture.
For young people, the news ‘happens by chance’
The graph below from the research mainly shows that young people are ‘passive news consumers’. They do not – like the older target group – actively look for news via social media and they follow the social media accounts of news makers to a much lesser extent. News finds them because they happen to see it on their timelines or because someone close to them forwards news (especially via WhatsApp). Another finding of the report is that young people do not use the same social media to stay informed as older news consumers. In addition to the accounts of traditional news brands, so-called news influencers also play a role in meeting the news need.
See news on social media and check via Google
What is striking about the behavior of young people is that social media serve as the most important source of news (78%), followed by friends and acquaintances (66%) and news sites and apps (48%). When they see the news and want to check whether it is a reliable source, young people mainly use Google to find out more about a subject. The report concludes that in addition to social media, search engines are also important in young people’s news consumption. Large tech companies such as Meta (Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp) and Alphabet (search engines Google and YouTube) therefore play a particularly dominant role in the distribution and accessibility of news.
Other conclusions from the report in brief
- Young people check messages on WhatsApp and Snapchat and social media timelines first thing in the morning. Older people are often the first to check the news sites and apps of established news brands. The mobile phone plays an important role for both groups.
- Young people grow up in an environment where news is less visible. The newspaper has disappeared from many households and the news is no longer watched at a fixed time. Young people also cannot clearly see whether their parents are reading the news when they are on their phone or laptop.
- Children of highly educated parents talk about the news at home more often than children of less educated parents.
- Despite the fact that news consumption is very different among young people, confidence in journalism is high.
- Young people have more trust in traditional news brands, such as the NOS, than in alternative news sources, such as those from news influencers.
- They have less need for ‘hard’ news, such as politics and economics, but more for news that relates to their own situation.
- There is more trust in news if a good explanation and context is given in understandable language.
Newsmakers don’t know much about Reels and TikTok
The CvdM researchers also spoke to newsmakers. These conversations show that traditional news organizations have difficulty translating their articles into a good format for social media. From the report: “Traditional news makers say they are well aware of the fact that their news users are getting older and that the growth from younger target groups is stagnating. Changing media use is widely seen as a driver of this development, but it does not yet appear to have led to a large-scale offensive to involve young people in the news or their own news brand. Most efforts do not go much further than attempts to build brand awareness with a social media presence, which too often happens with regular messages instead of contributions that conform to the rules of the medium in form and content. It is therefore not surprising that the reach of these contributions is limited. It is often still conventional news made in a conventional way and that is where news brands miss important opportunities. Especially because they are often still well known among young people and are also trusted by those who regularly encounter them.”
Social media not a revenue model?
Why do journalists have such difficulty translating articles into social media formats? According to the researchers, this is because there is no revenue model on social media. Many platforms, such as Instagram Reels and TikTok, have limited options that lead to traffic to the news sites. And so many commercial news brands do not see any benefit in this. But… if these news brands want to work on their relationship with future readers and subscribers, social media certainly plays an important role in this process. The report states: “It is therefore important for news brands to be where young people are – and that is on social media, especially TikTok and, to a slightly lesser extent, Instagram.”
Breaking with genre conventions
The report also calls on journalists to break with their genre conventions and distribute news stories in a different way, in a different language and in different formats. The researchers point to the success of channels such as NOS Stories and NOS op 3, but also to the successful channels of news influencers to demonstrate that a different approach is indeed successful.
Media pluralism
The report warns media makers and outlines a less than rosy scenario for the future: “This changed news consumption is permanent: the media routines that young people develop now will determine their media behavior in the future.”
The CvdM researchers argue that young people do not properly experience the value of news and that media makers are not in touch with their future users. “And that has consequences. Firstly, the plural media landscape (an important condition for the vitality of our democracy), where several independent newsrooms do their work, is at risk. On the other hand, domestic and foreign researchers have previously warned about the possible consequences of this changing media behavior. This leads to fragmentation of society because young people and older people no longer share a common frame of reference fueled by professional news.”
Recommendations for media creators
In the report, the researchers make several recommendations for news editors.
• 1: As a news organization, develop an approach to make news visible, findable and recognizable for young people. Breaking with journalistic conventions and using social media are necessary.
2: Investigate the possibility of (temporary) incentive measures for the news sector to develop initiatives specifically aimed at young people, such as the Journalism Incentive Fund or the Democracy and Media Foundation.
• 3: Regulate tech companies as quickly as possible, so that news becomes more prominent in the offer and new revenue models can emerge for the news sector.
• 4: Encourage news literacy among young people within education so that they learn to recognize professionally produced news, with extra attention to young people with a practice-oriented education.
You can download and read the entire report via this link: ‘Youth, Social Media and News Report, a look at the future of news’
Credits: Photo by Clem Onojeghuo via Unsplash