Social media is becoming increasingly important for younger people - a global trend. What is used how much, however, varies significantly. (picture alliance / dpa / imageBROKER / Valentin Wolf)
This emerges from the current Reuters Institute Digital News Report , which examines media usage in different countries. According to this, 30 percent of the 18- to 24-year-olds surveyed stated that social media was their most important news source. This is a significant increase: in the 2019 survey, the value was still 22 percent. In addition, this time 9 percent in this age group stated that they only received news via social media - in 2019 it was 5 percent.
The study includes social media platforms on which users can contribute content themselves, such as Facebook, Instagram and also messengers such as WhatsApp and the video platform Youtube. In recent years, many media in Germany, including daily newspapers, radio and magazine brands, have expanded their distribution channels to include social media. For example, you have accounts on Facebook or Youtube.
News also through Youtube
The Leibniz Institute for Media Research / Hans Bredow Institute (HBI) is responsible for the German partial study of the "Digital News Report". For older people, the concept of news is clearly linked to classic journalism, explains the media researcher at the Leibniz Institute, Sascha Hölig. This is not automatically the case with younger people. "Your news world consists of a very, very large number of actors," said Hölig on Deutschlandfunk. Classic media are still trusted, however.
Another striking feature of the study: The relevance of independent journalism to society differs between the age groups. While there are 88 percent of the Internet users surveyed aged 55 and over for whom independent journalism is important for the functioning of a society, it is significantly lower in the age group of 18 to 24-year-olds at 56 percent. That is quite worrying, says Hölig.
Facebook continues to lose
Overall, social media providers are not the only winners in the survey, as the study shows. "For example, Facebook has seen declining proportions in all age groups under the age of 45, with up to minus six percentage points in the group of 18- to 24-year-olds," says the report. In this age group, Instagram also lost: The value melted from 23 percent to 20 percent.
The study also queried the behavior of whether Internet users pay for online messages. In Germany, 10 percent stated that they had paid for online news in the past twelve months. In 2019 it was 8 percent. At the same time, this is the highest value since 2013.
Corona situation not yet taken into account
With regular use, daily news and daily topics are still ahead. More than half of the respondents said they used these offers several times a week. Spiegel online tops the list with 17 percent online. 45 percent of respondents said they generally trusted news.
In Germany, the results presented in the report are based on data collected between January 17 and 30, 2020. The YouGov survey institute interviewed around 2,000 people in Germany, making the study representative. The current news usage under the current corona situation can only be partially reflected due to the survey period in January, it says in the report for the German results. For this reason, particular attention was paid to general trends in the use of news that are emerging in the long term.
Survey in 40 countries
The study is being co-ordinated in a number of countries by the UK-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. General trends and national peculiarities of news use have been worked out since 2012 - for the current study in around 40 countries on six continents.
