Thursday, December 04, 2025

Finding the News

The latest report on the news consumption habits of young adults reveals that only 15 percent of those aged 18-29 follow the news closely, as opposed to 62 percent of those aged 65 and above.

Young people also tend to be less likely than older adults to get news about government and politics, science and technology, and business and finance.

But they are more than twice as likely as older Americans to follow entertainment news. (Both groups are roughly the same when it comes to sports news.)

As for political news specifically, younger adults say they often just happen to run across it on social media or from influencers, while older people seek it out by deliberately tuning in trusted news channels.

So the generations have completely different habits, I get that. But maybe we’re not all that different in how we feel about the news on those occasions when our consumption habits overlap. 

Yesterday, when my 14-year-old granddaughter and I both encountered this story — “Sabrina Carpenter to White House: Don’t use my music to tout ‘inhumane’ agenda” — we were in complete agreement that Sabrina Carpenter rocks.

When we talked about the issue involved — exploitation of an artist’s work by a politician without her permission — we agreed on that too.

I’ve noticed for a while that though my 20-something children and my teenaged grandchildren don’t tune into the news the way I do, they usually seem well-informed anyway.

That’s one of the reasons journalists need to continue to do the hard work of digging out the truth and getting it published — because your youngest news consumers will find it once its out there in the universe.

To read the entire report from the Pew Research Center, follow this link: Young Adults and the Future of News.

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