Young People Avoiding the News, Reuters Report

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - How do people stay informed in our digital age? And who do they trust? The Reuters Digital News Report 2026 answers those questions. The study, presented at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn, shows how journalism and its usage are evolving—especially among young people.

Jim Egan, who led the study, didn't exactly strike an optimistic tone in his presentation, saying that the "data this year is quite unsettling in many aspects." Egan is the main author of the report—carried out by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford—the largest annual survey on news consumption of its kind globally.

Egan pointed out that the report's aim is not to provide comfort but rather to present a snapshot of reality: "We do this as an exercise in trying to insert some facts and some comparative analysis across different markets into an industry and into an ecosystem that is full of opinion but does not always know what's actually going on."

Social media currently leads the field

One of the most important findings in the report: Social media networks and video platforms are more frequently used as news sources than television or the websites and apps of news outlets themselves.

The phenomenon has less to do with booming platforms than with a turn away from classic news formats: "So social media consumption and usage itself isn't actually growing very much," said Egan. "But what we're seeing is a decline in the use of other platforms, such as television broadcast news, as well as going direct to a news organization's website or its app."

This transformation is especially prevalent among younger target audiences. In the US, more than one-third of all respondents under 25 said they had never watched TV newscasts or used news websites regularly. "They're not only leaving," said Egan, "they're not even starting."

At the same time, the report warns against seeking to expand reach at any cost. Young people are avid users of social media and video platforms but trust in news is also at its lowest there, according to Egan. "There's an irony here that people are moving more and more to platforms that they trust less."

Video: Long formats are popular, too

Simultaneously, the report finds that video formats are becoming massively important. Some 75% of respondents claim to watch news videos weekly—especially on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Globally, 20% use TikTok as a source for news and 34% turn to YouTube. This number varies significantly by country. In Kenya, for instance, 66% of consumers get their news via YouTube.

Publishers with their own video content, however, are failing to profit from the boom because they are losing reach, says Egan. "Despite the evident popularity of video as a format, audiences are not responding positively to on-site video."

At the same time, the report contradicts a popular prejudice against young target groups and their supposedly short attention spans—showing that long-format videos are very popular among young people, not just TikTok-format videos or YouTube Shorts. Roughly 20% of respondents say they regularly watch videos exceeding 20 minutes in length, a similar number claim to follow live news programs on YouTube as well.

Young users are particularly active on this front. "It's not as if younger people will only ever pay attention to a video of two minutes," Egan emphasizes. Beyond that, use is moving back into the home, with a quarter of those surveyed globally saying they watch their news on platforms like YouTube on their televisions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also increasingly seen as a news source, with the share of people using AI chatbots to get their news around the world growing from 7 to 10% last year. That is "fast but not explosive growth," says Egan. "Trust in AI chatbots and news from them," he adds, "is very low at the moment, but that's not going to last forever."

No other alternative paths providing access to news information have been able to establish themselves across the board either. Although some young people depend on so-called news influencers, it is hardly a number that could replace established news sources, with only 10% of users saying such sources cover all of their news needs.

Trust continues to sink

Egan also warned against continued loss of trust, pointing out that trust in the news had fallen by at least three percentage points in 29 of the 48 countries covered in the survey. Only 37% of global respondents said they mostly trust the news. "Data shouldn't move that much in a year," he added.

Despite these disruptions, the report underscores the continued relevance of journalism. "Journalism still matters—in fact, in many ways it matters more than ever," Egan told the audience in Bonn. Many people, he said, expect some sort of orientation, especially in times of growing uncertainty and fear.

Roughly 100,000 people in 48 countries worldwide were interviewed for the 2026 edition of the Reuters Digital News Report.

The German portion of the study was carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Media Research in Hamburg.

The Reuters Institute is a research institution at the University of Oxford in England and receives financial support from the US tech giant Google, among others.

Read: Global Media Forum: How Big Tech Is Changing Journalism

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