New Study Shows Young People of Color Get Their News From Social Media
Teens, tweens, and millennials, how do you get your news?
Are you looking up New York Times on your phone? Are you buying the Chicago Tribune or the Star-Ledger off of the newsstands when they are hot off the press? It seems, that the old ways of getting news are becoming more and more a thing of the past.
A new study from the Pew Research Center suggested that 62% of adults are getting their news from social media, and 18% of them get it very often. The Pew Research Center ran a survey that included 4,654 members of their American Trends Panel between January 12 and February 8, 2016. Even though that news is cool and all, which social media site does a better job of curating the news?
70% of Reddit users get news from that social platform, 66% of Facebook users get news from that social platform, and 59% of Twitter users get news from that social platform, which is interesting seeing how Twitter said that it did not want to be a ‘Social Networking’ app anymore, and it wanted to be considered a news app because it is “all about what’s happening live” just a few months ago.
Most of the other social platforms do not gather news in the same breadth and depth as the leading three do. Tumblr (31%), Instagram (23%), YouTube (21%), LinkedIn (19%), Snapchat (17%), and Vine (14%) do not carry the same weight with regards to news as the others do.
When looking at demographics, it seems like more non-white citizens, women, and persons aged between 18 and 29 are getting their news from Instagram, which could in-part be attributed to sources like The YBF and The Shade Room who have made their followings soar due to how they command attention on the photo-sharing application.
The report that Pew Research conducted was updated based on a report done in 2013. There were significant differences in some of the social media platforms including Facebook, which jumped from 47% to 66% in the last three years, Instagram which went from 13% to 23%, and LinkedIn that moved from 13% to 19%.
These findings are important when considering the upcoming presidential election. How will the nominees use social media and other news sources to reach young people of color? Will they at all?
That remains to be seen.
(Photo by Open Source)