Ofcom’s latest annual News Consumption in the UK report highlights how far Gen Z has backed away from direct consumption of traditional news sources.
In the UK, young adults, aged 16 to 24, are ahead of their older peers in terms of consuming news online (83 per cent compared to 68 per cent of adults generally), with just nine per cent of them navigating to news sites directly.
Instead, 37 per cent consume news via social media, which means that viral articles are more likely to be absorbed than less attention-grabbing news stories.
Among the age group as a whole, Instagram tops the list with 44 per cent, followed by Facebook (33 per cent), Twitter (31 per cent) and TikTok (29 per cent). Breaking into this social media monopoly is the BBC, which still matches Facebook on 33 per cent.
But an interesting trend is occurring in younger Gen-Zers. Among children aged between 12 and 15, video apps are the most used single source of news, with TikTok on 28 per cent and YouTube on 25 per cent.
If this continues as they move between age groups, this could be a significant development for how informed the public is in the long run. Without regulatory guidelines and sub-editors to check print and broadcast news, as well as a history of effectively spreading misinformation and disinformation, social networks offer an imperfect way of keeping the public informed.
There are differences between the social platforms and the type of news that tends to be consumed on each. Twitter, for example, is a source of political news for 45 per cent of users, whilst it’s just 25 per cent on TikTok, where celebrities (55 per cent) and lighthearted and entertainment news (43 per cent) dominate.
This shouldn’t be overstated, however, especially considering the vastly different number of Brits on each network. A small percentage on Facebook, with its three billion users, is still a lot more than Twitter, with its estimated 350 million.
“Despite the differentiation in consumption of these types of news on particular social media platforms, most platforms are used for a range of news types,” the report says.
