By Will Erbes
As Generation Z becomes media literate, young people are getting their news primarily from social media, changing the way that we consume news.
Young people are more likely to get their news from social media and their phones, says a report from Ypulse. Most young people are consuming the news at least once a day through social media.
Legacy news sources like radio and TV are falling by the wayside as social media rises to the top in news. According to a Statista report,
43% of Generation Z members check their news through social media at least once a day, while only 8% of Gen Z watches TV news. This is especially troubling to the legacy news industry, because it means that news sources like radio, television and newspapers may fall out of use in the coming years.
As legacy companies fall behind, digitally-focuses news companies are picking up the pace.
Companies like Buzzfeed, which primarily focus on digital news, are doing well right now, boasting they made 200 million in revenue in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s becoming clear that Gen Z is going to shape the way that we access our news in the future. Sharing news over social media is quickly becoming the new norm, and many large news institutions started sharing their articles online years ago.
What sites are Gen Z using?
Below are the largest social media sites by revenue. (From SearchEngineJournal)
- Youtube
- TikTok
TikTok is an interesting social media because it has absolutely exploded in popularity recently. TikTok essentially revolutionized how social media companies share content, and now many other social media sites include short-form video as a standard feature.
Youtube, Instagram, and even Snapchat have included short-form video sections of their apps, clearly trying to take a little bit of TikTok’s pie.
Short-form video is interesting for news sharing, because most videos have to be under one minute long. This allows most content creators to put more information in a video than a tweet, but less than an entire article. It’s certainly an effective way of sharing news.
As news gets shared online like other viral content, there is the concern around misinformation spreading. It’s everyone’s duty to be media literate and spot fake news, but it’s really easy for misleading or even flat-out false information to be spread on the internet.
If you’re worried about misinformation, stay vigilant and always check the sources.
