Poll: Young adults do consume news — in their own way

Associated Press

CHICAGO

Young adults have a reputation for being connected to one another and disconnected from the news. But a survey has found that mobile devices and social networking are keeping them more engaged with the broader world than previously thought.

They want news, they say, though they don’t always aggressively seek it out — perhaps simply happening upon it on a friend’s online feed. And they want it daily.

The survey of Americans age 18 to 34, sometimes called the millennial generation, found that two-thirds of respondents said they consume news online regularly, often on a social networking site. Of those, 40 percent do so several times a day, according to the poll, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute.

It’s been a slowly building trend in news consumption that experts say is trickling up to older generations — and that young people say helps them stay current, even if they never read an actual newspaper or watch the evening news on TV.

“I don’t think people would expect us to know what we know,” says Erica Quinn, a 24-year-old college student in Gainesville, Fla., who participated in the survey. The findings were to be presented today in Nashville at the annual convention of the Newspaper Association of America.

Among other things, the respondents said their consumption of news and information on various devices was most often sparked by an interest in civic issues, for social reasons, including discussing a topic with friends, or because they just find it enjoyable.

The survey found that young adults generally get harder news from more traditional news sites and “softer” lifestyle news from social networks, Facebook being the overwhelming favorite.

That’s generally how it works for Marilu Rodriguez, a 29-year-old from suburban Chicago, who participated in a focus group that accompanied the survey.

She recalls how, as a child, the TV news would come on at her house after her family had watched the latest episode of their favorite telenovela, a Spanish-language soap opera.

“It was a family thing to watch the news,” Rodriguez says.

Now her smartphone is her most frequent portal to the world, as she surfs social networking and news sites, often on her train ride to and from work as a coordinator for a nonprofit organization in downtown Chicago. Like many in the survey, she gets a lot of her news through a “diverse mix of friends” on those social networking sites.

She considers herself an active seeker of news and still watches TV news, though she expressed frustration over slanted coverage and lack of serious stories. “Some news stations need to grow up,” she says.

Still, only 39 percent of the survey respondents said they typically actively seek out news, while 60 percent said they mostly “bump into” that type of content as they do other things on Facebook and other sites.

That certainly could be seen as passive consumption.

But Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, noted that many respondents who generally let news come to them might comment on a story posted by a friend or look for more information because they were skeptical.

“So there’s a level of activity or participation that wasn’t even possible in earlier times,” says Rosenstiel, who will present the survey findings in Nashville.