Young People and News (PDF; 223 KB)
Source: Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
From press release (Word; 33 KB):

The report, titled “Young People and News,” is based on a national sample survey of 1800 Americans that included teens (ages 12-17), young adults (ages 18-30), and older adults. The sample is noteworthy for its inclusion of teenage respondents, who’ve seldom been polled nationally on their news habits.

Although some observers claim that 9/11 and the Iraq conflict have sparked unusually high levels of interest in current affairs among the upcoming generation of citizens, the survey does not support the claim, at least in the context of attention to daily news coverage. Teens are significantly less attentive to daily news than young adults, who in turn pay substantially less attention than older adults. The survey found, in fact, that 28 percent of teens pay almost no attention to daily news and that an additional 32 percent are casually attentive to a single source only. Taken together, 60 percent of teens can be considered basically inattentive to daily news, as compared with 48 percent of young adults and only 23 percent of older adults.

Despite their stated preference for Internet-based news, teens and young adults were found to be twice as likely to get daily news from television. Moreover, despite claims that young Americans rely heavily on non-traditional television programs, such as Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, such programs are not a significant source of day-to-day news for the large majority of America’s teens and young adults. When teens and young adults turn to television for news, most of them rely on the same sources as older Americans— broadcast and cable newscasts. The difference is that older Americans are twice as likely as young adults and teens to regularly watch television news daily.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2007 at 8:51 am and is filed under Age and Aging, Media and entertainment, Social and cultural issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.