More young Americans than we thought might be reading news reports each day. Furthermore, minor changes in social network features could influence how consumers of all ages process the information they see.

Still, we’ll need more evidence—especially about why young people look at the news—before we can determine if any of these communication dynamics affect belief in the civic duty to keep informed (see Sept. 4 post).

Teen news engagement

Research from Northwestern University, announced Sept. 6, reported that 29% of U.S. teens said they saw news reports daily. The percentage climbed into the 40s for weekly news engagement.

“Older teens (16 to 17 years old) showed slightly higher engagement levels than younger teens (13 to 15 years old),” said a news release from Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. “This finding may seem logical given that the college application process and eligibility to vote may trigger increased interest in national events.”

The reference to voting got my attention. Past communication research has shown that voting-age adults felt obligated to keep up with current affairs. Citizens said they needed to know what was happening so they could be informed voters (civic duty to keep informed).

The Northwestern survey didn’t appear to ask teens way they looked at news items daily or weekly. Therefore, we can’t tell if they were motivated by a similar civic duty to keep informed.

Nevertheless, the Northwestern news engagement results for young Americans appeared more optimistic than what we saw in the June 2023 Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute at Oxford University (see Sept. 4 post). That study said that only 49% of Americans overall were interested in news. “Self-declared interest in news is lower amongst women and younger people, with the falls often greatest in countries characterised by high levels of political polarization,” the report said (p. 21).

“The (Northwestern) survey found more engagement with news among teens than we were expecting,” said Stephanie Edgerly, associate dean for research at Northwestern’s Medill School, in the online news release. “We found that 29% of teens said they encounter news daily. That’s encouraging.”

The Northwestern research reported that 46% of teens saw local TV news daily or weekly and that 42% encountered national network TV news daily or weekly. About a third of the teens surveyed said they engaged with news on YouTube (37%), TikTok (35%), or Instagram (33%) daily or weekly, although the sources of that news were not known.

Only 5% of teens said they encountered news daily through local or national newspapers. The numbers were higher for weekly news encounters in local newspapers (18%) and national newspapers (13%).

Classroom assignments may have contributed to teen news engagement. Three-quarters (75%) of the teens surveyed said they discussed news stories in school classes, and 62% followed the news as part of a class assignment. Another 59% said they discussed how to tell whether information could be trusted.

“This survey provides a snapshot of how U.S. teens are engaging with news, and we don’t often get data this level of detail from a large national sample of U.S. teens,” Edgerly said in the online release. “It’s great in helping clarify trends.”

Social media dynamics

Because more than one-third of teens encountered news through online social networks, I noted two additional studies, reported Sept. 11 by Newman Lab. These two studies indicated that seemingly simple changes to social media features could affect user opinions and news dissemination. Such factors, therefore, might play some role in teen news engagement as well.

One study showed that online endorsements, such as likes and retweets, influenced people’s opinions of policies related to COVID-19. Participants in an experiment saw two versions of a social media post about tensions between economic activity and public health. Those who viewed pro-economy posts with a high number of likes were less likely to favor pandemic-related restrictions, such as banning gatherings. Those who viewed pro-public health posts with a high number of likes were more likely to favor restrictions. The experiment involved participants from the United States, Italy, and Ireland.

The other study examined how a change to Twitter’s retweet policy a few weeks before the 2020 presidential election affected news dissemination. The change encouraged users to add their own commentary when they retweeted information. Twitter hoped the change would prompt users to reflect on the content they were sharing and slow the spread of misinformation.

The result, according to the study, was a drop in retweets on average across several U.S. news outlets by more than 15%. The average drop in retweets for “liberal” outlets was more than 20%, but the drop for “conservative” outlets was only 5%. Furthermore, the Twitter policy appeared to affect visits to news websites. That change suggested that the new policy had influenced news dissemination overall.

Instagram, Threads, and X (formerly Twitter) now allow some users to hide the number of likes on posts, the Newman Lab item said. As a result, author Juan S. Morales, assistant professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University, speculated those changes could affect political discourse on social networks.

No information on teen motivations

The idea that more young Americans than we expected are regularly seeing news reports is encouraging. I’m glad to see that schools are requiring teens to read news stories and are helping students judge the credibility of reports. I’m intrigued by how characteristics of the social media environment can affect the way people process information they see.

We still don’t know, however, why teens engage with news—other than to complete class assignments. Consequently, we can’t determine whether young people today recognize the same civic duty to keep informed that earlier generations reported. We may not be able to assume, therefore, the same connections between news consumption, public opinion formation, and voting behavior that we once did.

The relationship between news engagement, public opinion, and electoral behavior remains a fertile field for research—especially in today’s vibrant communication landscape and polarized political environment.

Copyright © 2023 Douglas F. Cannon