Various studies show that although young people are interested in the news, traditional news brands are not their most obvious news sources. Young people mainly look to social media to fulfill their needs.
According to the recent Youth Survey 2023, it appears that a young target group likes to consume news. It Youth survey 2023 was published in December, in collaboration with Mediahuis, WayneParkerKent and Mediatest. The report asks where young people get the news from. More than 2,900 young people participated in the study, divided into three age categories. The answer is a mix of traditional news brands, such as NOS, De Telegraaf and RTL and social media channels, such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Social media as the most important source of news
If we look at the figures, almost half (45%) of the participating young people mention social media as their most important source of news. That is the average percentage in all three age categories. About one in three (28%) get their news from online or digital newspapers. Traditional channels such as TV, radio and print are not that popular among young people.
In the graph above you can see that the youngest target group in particular, between 15 and 21 years old, rely on social media to fulfill their news needs (63%). For 22 to 28 year olds this is 44% and for 29 to 35 year olds it is 27%. The graph shows that fewer young people consume their news through the online or digital editions of the newspaper. This is especially the case with the youngest target group. Traditional channels such as TV, radio and print hardly play an important role.
Direct access to the newspaper versus access via social media
Another investigation. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism launches the Digital News Report every year. In the 2023 edition, which was published in the fall, the researchers looked at the extent to which news consumers gain access to articles. The researchers say: “We continue to monitor key access points to online news and investigate the impact on consumption across different groups. Every year we see that direct access to apps and websites becomes less important and social media becomes more important. We have reached a tipping point in recent years, with social media preference (30%) now expanding its lead over direct access (22%).” Please note: this concerns all news consumers (of all ages) in the 46 countries surveyed (with approximately 2000 respondents per country).
The researchers of the Digital News Report 2023 also note that younger users are less likely to go directly to a news site or app and prefer to use social media. The researchers say: “The annual changes we see in direct versus social appear to be driven less by older individuals changing their behavior and more by emerging behavior of younger groups.”
Publishers’ problem in involving a young target group will only increase in the long term
The graph below shows the behavior of media consumers in Great Britain. The figures show that people over 35 (blue line) have hardly changed their behavior over time. But the 18-24 year group (turquoise line) uses a news website or app considerably less often. “This represents an influx into our research of more ‘social natives’ who have grown up in the age of social and messaging apps and appear to exhibit very different behaviors as a result,” the Digital News Report 2023 said.
Meanwhile, 43% of 18 to 24 year olds (worldwide) say social media is now their main source of news. These changes are not limited to these so-called ‘social natives’, with young people showing a high dependence on platforms and social media. “The problem of publishers in involving a young target group will only increase in the long term,” the researchers from The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism say based on their research.
What are news publishers doing to reverse this trend?
Since October, Mediahuis has started a project to make news for a young target group of Gen Zers. Sophie van Oostvoorn works as a content lead on concept development and research into this target group. “We have it at Mediahuis (publisher of NRC and De Telegraaf, ed.) two questions: 1: how are we going to reach Gen Z with quality journalism? 2: what is a revenue model that fits with this?”
Van Oostvoorn says that 2024 will be all about research and planning. “We will initially look at how we can meet the information needs of Gen Zers. The emphasis of this project is on solving the problem of young media users. What do young people need? If you look with NRC glasses or Telegraaf glasses on, you will get different answers,” says Van Oostvoorn.
C.Thru, as the Mediahuis project is called, will initially focus on social media. Van Oostvoorn: “We are going to see which formats work well there and we will translate our findings into new formats. These can also be events or podcasts. The project is still early and we are still really working from a blank canvas.” Van Oostvoorn hopes that the project will start publishing the first formats around the summer.
News brands on TikTok and the arrival of the ‘news influencer’
There are plenty of examples for Mediahuis. You see a new generation of news brands emerging on social media, and specifically Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. These are organizations like the Marker from BNN Vara or NOS Stories from the NOS. But there are also good examples internationally, such as: The News Movement and several international news brands that redistribute their video content in bite-sized chunks via Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. It’s not just the digital news brands, ‘news influencers’ are also springing up like mushrooms. These are not so much the creators, but rather the curators of the news, who discuss the highlights of current affairs every day on their channels. are good examples Dylan Page (aka ‘News Daddy’) with 10.2 million followers on TikTok. Another example is Kelsey Russell, a cheerful 23-year-old American woman who publishes a video several times a week in which she discusses articles from the New York Times. She films herself, with a paper newspaper in hand, to emphasize how important it is to be aware of what is going on in the world. And almost 90,000 followers are watching. Business Insider wrote a good article about her.
Do young people still subscribe to news?
Reaching young people does not seem to be much of a challenge for publishers. What will be difficult is to engage, retain and convert this target group into subscribers. Let’s go back to the 2023 Youth Survey by Mediahuis, WayneParkerKent and Mediatest.
Participants in this survey were also asked about their willingness to pay for news. And as it turns out, it’s not that big. The report states: “The vast majority of young people do not pay for their news services. A total of 11% of young people (all ages) indicate that they have a paid subscription to a paper newspaper and 15% to a digital newspaper or news brand.
In the graph above you can see that it is mainly men who take out a subscription. The differences between the behavior of men and women are enormous. Men pay a lot more for their news provision than women. 16% of all men pay for a paper newspaper, compared to only 7% of women. We see the same thing with the digital newspaper: 20% of men pay for this and that percentage is almost twice as high as among women (11%). And it also applies: the older the target group, the greater the willingness to pay for news.
Credits: photo by Courtney Clayton through Unsplash.