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Only 15 percent of adults under 30 follow the news regularly. Among those 65 and older? 62 percent.
For decades, legacy media assumed that the gap would close with age. Young people would eventually watch the nightly news, subscribe to newspapers, and develop loyalty to established outlets.
Maturity would pull them back.
The 2025 data is clear. They are not coming back.
The belief that age alone would restore traditional news habits was never supported by evidence. It is an assumption embedded in strategy decks, not in lived behavior. Today, that assumption has collapsed under the weight of new research from Pew, Gallup, Reuters, and Medill.
The habits shaping a generation's information diet are not temporary. They are structural, durable, and reinforced by the platforms where people live their digital lives.
The numbers tell a story the industry can no longer avoid.
They Didn't Leave. They Never Arrived.
Pew's 2025 News Platform Fact Sheet shows that 93 percent of adults ages 18 to 29 at least sometimes get news from digital devices, whereas only 47 percent report the same for television.
But the engagement gap is even more telling. New data by the Pew-Knight Initiative found that only 15 percent of adults under 30 report following the news all or most of the time. Among adults aged 65 and older, the proportion is 62 percent.
This is not a temporary dip. It is fundamentally different relationship to news.
The Feed is the New Front Page
Pew's 2025 report on young adults and the future of news shows that 76 percent of adults under 30 get news from social media at least sometimes. Nearly half regularly get news from TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube.
Even more revealing: 70 percent of young adults say they mostly get political news because they come across it, not because they seek it out. News is incidental. It arrives through feeds, personalities, algorithmic recommendations, and cultural proximity—not ritual.
I saw this firsthand. During the Titan submersible disaster, my then 21-year-old daughter was scrolling through TikTok for updates while I—with 20-plus years of breaking news experience—watched from the sidelines with trepidation. A creator was explaining the physics of deep-sea pressure. Another showed the timeline of events. A third was fact-checking OceanGate's safety claims in real-time.
She wasn't rejecting journalism. She was getting it from somewhere else.
The Global Picture: Platforms Over Institutions
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 reports similar behavior globally. Social platforms and video networks have overtaken television and news websites as the primary source of news for younger adults.
Smartphones are the dominant gateway to news.
Reuters also found that 58 percent of global respondents feel uncertain about distinguishing truth from falsehood online.
In that environment, people seek interpreters—not institutions—to help them make sense of what they're seeing.
Why Creators Are Winning
Pew's 2025 News Influencers Fact Sheet shows that 21 percent of Americans regularly get news from influencers. Among adults under 30, that number is 38 percent.
Those who rely on influencers report that these figures help them understand complex events, report quickly, feel authentic, and access perspectives they do not find elsewhere.
These are modern trust signals: connection, clarity, transparency, and immediacy.
Legacy media built fortresses of credibility. Creators built bridges of connection.
Trust Isn't Declining. It's Relocating.
Gallup's 2025 survey shows only 28 percent of Americans have a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in mass media—the lowest number ever recorded.
More than 70 percent report having little or no trust.
And the gap is generational:
43 percent of adults 65 and older trust the media.
No younger group exceeds 28 percent.
The new Pew Research data also show that adults under 30 are more likely than any other age group to trust news they see on social media.
Trust is not waiting to be inherited. It is choosing new homes.
Local News: A System in Freefall
Medill's State of Local News 2025 report reveals a collapse in local infrastructure in the United States.
Key findings:
213 counties are now news deserts.
50 million Americans lack access to local news.
136 newspapers closed in 2025.
Newsroom employment declined another 7 percent in a single year and is down over 75 percent since 2005.
Another 250 counties are at risk of becoming news deserts within a decade.
When local journalism disappears, so do local trust pathways. People turn to available information sources: creators, group chats, newsletters, and informal community networks.
These new trust ecosystems form outside institutional structures.
The Myth Dies Here
Every dataset points to the same fundamental truth.
The institutions that once shaped generational media habits have weakened. The rituals that once reinforced engagement have vanished. The platforms that once distributed news are no longer the center of the ecosystem. And the trust that once flowed toward institutions now flows toward individuals.
Young adults are not waiting for institutions to reclaim authority. They are building their own information networks.
There is no return to habits they never had.