Generations: How News Consumption Is Shifting Across Time
The way that people engage with and consume news and information has gone through several shifts over time, but the last thirty years, with the widespread availability of the internet, social media, and smartphones, has changed the news landscape at a dizzying speed. No longer is it reliable enough to work for a local newspaper or to anchor on cable news to ensure you are reaching a broad enough audience demographically. Young people simply aren’t picking up the paper or watching TV.
In fact, Gen Z has proven extremely difficult to engage because studies show the way they get news has never involved having a connection to a news brand or particular source; rather the generation that grew up with smartphones engages with the news more casually. This change from relying on a single channel or paper for the news is so abrupt and so fundamental that it doesn’t seem as though it will reverse any time soon.
Another interesting piece of the puzzle is the shifting of social media landscapes. Gen Z, whom the study we’ve linked have branded “social natives” (vs. “digital natives,” who were raised with the internet but before the rise of major social media like Twitter, Instagram, etc.) have largely left and/or have never used Facebook, which serves as a major news source for every other age bracket, with increasing numbers correlating to increasing age. Social natives are more likely to get their news from TikTok or Twitter, with five times as many in the 18-24 age bracket saying they get their news from TikTok in 2022 as they did in 2020.
Data points also signal a fundamental shift in what younger generations expect from their news sources. Younger consumers (under 35) overwhelmingly stated they expect media organizations to take strong stands on important central issues, such as climate change. However, counterintuitively, the younger demographic also care more about local/celebrity news, educational news, and “fun” news than the older demographic, who prefer traditional stories and topics, like politics, sports, and international affairs. These preferences vary greatly from location to location and appear cultural rather than global.
Andrea Coville, CEO of Brodeur Partners, a Boston-based media company, also noted that the simple formats of everyday consumption have changed:
“Journalists and media outlets need to think about how they deliver reporting to this new generation of consumers. They live in an 8-second world, and everything is sensory to them. So to get their attention, the media needs to continue to adapt the way they deliver the news, and brands need to think about how they package their news to reporters to help them tell their stories in a more sensory way.”
The data supports this: Two-thirds of Gen Z watch and listen to more news than they read, and Gen Z and Millennials were more likely to rank “creativity” at the top of their list of important things they look for in a news source than Boomers or Gen X. Gen Z was also four times as likely to rank “engagement” at the top of their list than even Millennials were. Also, phones were Gen Z and Millennials top device that they consumed news on by far.
So the verdict is in: newspapers and TVs are out, computers and phones are in. Gone are the days of black block prints blaring, EXTRA! Being the only visual selling point. In an increasingly visual society that gets more information in far less time than any generation before, information and the flow of it must adapt.
