Younger Adult News Habits

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While younger Americans are interested in a wide variety of topics at levels similar to older generations, the device they turn to and the way they discover the news is more clearly influenced by age.
Older adults are more likely to rely on television, radio, and print media for their news than are those in the youngest adult cohort, who are more likely to use mobile devices. However, more traditional devices are still important for younger adult news habits, too. Adults age 18-29 are equally as likely to get news from TV as from their cell phones. And there are distinct differences in the habits of those ages 18-29 from those who are age 30-39. For instance, adults 30-39 are as likely to utilize TV as their computers or their phones. The younger …show more content…

Seventy-six percent of adults age 18-29 who own a cell phone and 84 percent of adults age 30-39 who own a cell phone say they used it to get news in the past week, while just 59 percent of adults age 40-59 and 37 percent of adults age 60 and over say they did so.
Among those who use tablets, no significant differences exist among age cohorts in the likelihood of people using those devices to read the news; however, younger people are now more likely to own tablets in the first place. And of those who own or use a tablet, they are very likely to use them for news. Seventy-two percent of 18-29-year-old tablet owners used them to get news in the past week, about the same rate of use as 30-39-year-old (74 percent) and 40-59-year-old (75 percent), and a little higher than tablet owners who are 60 plus (65 percent).
Similarly, younger adults are more likely to find news through web-based media. Younger people age 18-29 are more than three times as likely to discover news through social media than adults 60 and older (71 percent vs. 21 percent). A majority of 30-39-year-old also discover news through social media (64 percent), as do 41 percent of 40-59-year-old. Similarly, people under 40 are more likely than those 40 and over to discover news through internet searches and online news

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