Teenagers in the United States are leaning more heavily than adults on social media, influencers and other nontraditional sources to find news and information, according to a national poll released by the Media Insight Project. The survey found sharp age differences in day-to-day news habits, even as it suggested traditional outlets have not disappeared from the trusted information mix.
The Media Insight Project’s findings, based on a national study of 2,101 Americans, show that more teens are turning to social media for news and to influencers for national-issues coverage. The poll is a collaboration among The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the American Press Institute, and journalism schools at Northwestern University and the University of Maryland.
On social media, the survey found that 36% of U.S. adults say they get news from social media at least once a day, while 57% of people ages 13 to 17 say they do. On influencers and independent content creators, it found that 43% of adults say they get information on national issues and events from those sources at least “sometimes,” compared with 57% of teenagers.
Robyn Tomlin, executive director of the American Press Institute, said Americans have not abandoned traditional journalism but are reevaluating what they trust. “Traditional national and local outlets continue to stand out as a trusted source, but people, especially younger audiences, are also building relationships with younger creators they believe are transparent and authentic,” Tomlin said. “That reality has enormous implications for the future of news.”
Beyond social media, the survey also points to the role of search and AI in teenage news routines. It found that about 4 in 10 teens get news daily from search engines, and about 2 in 10 say that they get news daily from artificial intelligence chatbots. The poll found little difference across age groups in people who said they get news from digital sites or apps and in those who get news from television and streaming.
Tom Rosenstiel, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland who worked on the survey, said the idea that television is disappearing is a misunderstanding. “The idea that television is going away is a misapprehension,” Rosenstiel said. “Watching news through video is not going away. It’s changing. The way you see it on YouTube is different than on the ‘CBS Evening News.’”
Despite the shift toward nontraditional sources, the survey found that teenagers express relatively low confidence in the content they receive from both AI chatbots and influencers. Though teens are more likely than adults to say they have “a great deal of confidence” in information they get from AI chatbots, relatively few rate their certainty as high.
The poll found that just 11% of teenagers have a high level of certainty in the information coming from AI chatbots, compared with 4% of adults. It also found that about one-third of teens say they have a high level of confidence in their ability to distinguish AI-generated content from human-generated content, compared with about 2 in 10 adults.
For influencers, the survey found similarly low high-confidence levels among teenagers. Only 12% of teenagers said they have “a great deal of confidence” in information they get from independent creators or influencers, whether that information comes via TV, social media or other sources. That figure is higher than the 6% of adults who said the same, but it still represents a relatively small share of each age group.
The survey also found that teenagers report greater interest in celebrity, music, movies and other entertainment-oriented news than adults do, while adults show more interest in political news, business issues and the economy. It further found widespread news fatigue among both age groups, particularly regarding national government and politics, with about 6 in 10 people saying they try to sidestep news related to President Donald Trump.
Rosenstiel said people are tired of the sense that events are “spinning out of control” and that they are selective about how they spend time. “People are tired of the feeling that things are spinning out of control that they’re very judicious in what they’re spending their time on,” Rosenstiel said. He also said that teens may seek news and information differently, including through entertainment and social media-delivered formats, because the most important journalism for some people is what helps them navigate daily life rather than what fits a traditional definition of “real news.”
The poll of adults was conducted Feb. 5-8, and the poll of teens was conducted Feb. 2-16, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points, and the margin of sampling error for teenagers overall is plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.