Are Millennials Engaged with the News?

There is this idea that millennials, the young generation of Australians, lack interest in the news and don’t feel concerned with what’s happening in the world around them.  As a millennial myself, I can say that this is not the case. Young people, in particular university students, are very engaged in what happens around them, clear in recent debates over university fees, climate change and same-sex marriage. While we may not absorb news from newspapers and televisions as much as the previous generation, we get our news from different avenues.

To find out more on the news intake of millennials, Journofeed has undertaken a survey of 50 university students from across four of Queensland’s major universities; the Queensland University of Technology, the University of Queensland, Griffith Univeristy and ACU. This survey asked five questions and whilst the results from a small pool of students are certainly not definitive of the whole generation’s activity, they do give a good indicator of the trends in this age group. The average age of participant was 20

The rise of social media.

Unsurprisingly, social media platforms take the reign as the most popular place for university students to receive their news. Over half of the people surveyed said that Facebook was their main source of news and when including Twitter and other forms of social media, this equated to 66% of respondents getting their news most regularly from a social media platform.

Receiving news through social media has become more common with the increase in the use of smart phones over the last decade and the convenience of accessing news anytime and anywhere. Facebook remains a strong driver of traffic to external news websites with 64% of respondents saying that they click on a link to an external news article from organisations such as ABC online or the Brisbane Times at least once a day.

The decline of Newspapers

The results of the survey also suggest a difficult future ahead for traditional print publications with zero of the 50 respondents citing newspapers as their main source of news. A quarter of respondents said they had not read a newspaper in over a year whilst 4% said they had never read a newspaper, something unheard of a few decades ago.

Majority of respondents said it had been more than a month but less than a year since they had read a newspaper. Of those who said they had read a newspaper in the last week, many made comments to specific purposes such as reading one in the waiting room, or reading one for an assignment, indicating it is not a regular occurrence for them.

Television remains relevant

Television remains relevant to the university students sampled with over 30% saying it is still their main source of news. Over 75% of people said that they watch television news such as Channel 7 or the ABC at least once a week, with 10% saying that they still watch it daily.

What was surprising was the fact that half of those surveyed said they first found out about the Sydney Lindt Café Siege via television, despite more people claiming that Facebook was their primary news source. Comparative only 28% of people said news of the siege broke to them on Facebook. This may be put down to the fact that the Sydney Siege occurred in the morning, a time when many people have the television turned on at home. The siege first broke live on Sunrise as their studio is in Market Place, with the people watching that program finding out instantly.

Summary of Findings

Millennials are clearly still engaged with the news, just in a different way to the previous generation. Social media has clearly impacted the news sphere, whilst newspapers will continue to phase out as younger audiences are less engaged with them.