Experts say millennials are not news illiterate

AUSTIN— News experts say millennials are reading less but thinking more.

“I think this generation is more skeptical....they want to rely on a variety of sources before they make up their mind,” ABC Field Producer Gina Treadgold said.

According to a study conducted by the Media Insight Project, although only 45 percent of millennials regularly follow five or more “hard news” topics, 85 percent of millennials said that keeping up with the news is at least “somewhat important” to them. Sixty-nine percent of millennials get news at least once a day, and 88 percent receive news on Facebook regularly.

“Before, the news was you having to buy a newspaper, or you had to sit down and watch the TV, so in a way that excluded young people,” Professor Charlie Beckett of the London School of Economics and Political Science said. “But now if news can pop up in your social networks, then there isn’t an age qualification.”

In looking closely at the modern news habits of millennials, the study found that although they do not visit news sites, read print papers, or watch television news in as great a number as their generational predecessors, millennials are not news illiterate. According to the study, millennials are still getting and thinking about the news, albeit in vastly modern ways.

Beckett, a former journalist and director of the international journalism based think-tank Polis, said that news is “accessible now, more than ever, for young people.” He also said that despite millennials’ decreased reliance on traditional news media in favor of more alternative news consumption methods, young people are still aware and interested in relevant newsworthy issues, especially ones that pertain to them directly.

“There are young people, for example, that are very interested in the news, and I suspect that young people are more interested in journalism, like what’s happening around them. They’re also very interested in themselves, but the habits of young people to be more connected, to be constantly sharing, means there’s an appetite for taking an interest in the world,” Beckett said.

Professor Thomas B. Ksiazek from Villanova University also said that millennials’ increased use of digital based media platforms to consume news doesn’t mean that they are uninformed and instead may actually provide benefits for the future of news consumption.

“There’s the opportunity to immediately engage in some sort of discussion or interaction around the news. That is one of the unique benefits of digital platforms . . . In general, we see that across each group, people aren’t consuming less news than they were. They are just doing so in different ways. If that is what is appealing to younger generations, to get the news where they get other information and entertainment, or interact socially and get their news in that environment, I think there is definitely a benefit there,” Ksiazek said.

In an informal survey of 131 freshmen and seniors at the University of Texas at Austin, 28.4 percent of students said they read the news several times a week, and 26.2 percent said they read the news daily. However, 90 percent of the students surveyed said they get their news from online sources, such as social media like Facebook and news apps.

“I resent the notion that all young people are news illiterate, or we’re only interested in celebrity gossip,” freshman government major and survey participant Alejandra Zuniga said. “Young people are the ones starting the movements you always read about in the newspaper and the news updates.”

Like Zuniga, Beckett said that the presence of social movements is a good indicator of young people’s continued interest in politics. To Beckett, an increased reliance on alternative news consumption methods does not equate to a lack of interest in more serious issues.

“I don’t think younger people are consuming more rubbish than in the past. They’re consuming more media now more than ever, we know that...but I’m not sure that you can prove that young people are not also consuming more serious stuff when you think of big campaigns like Black Lives Matter or body image. There’s a lot quite serious stuff that people are consuming,” Beckett said.

In the same informal survey of 131 freshmen and seniors, 24.6 percent said they were “very confident” in their ability to distinguish what is and what is not legitimate news, and 66.2 percent said they were at least “somewhat confident” in their ability to recognize fake news.

Bryson Thomas, a senior government major at the University of Texas at Austin, said he reads the news multiple times a day and that he tries to verify the accuracy of the news sources he reads “as often as possible. The more you read the news, the more you can tell what is fake news.”

Some experts contend that millennials are astute news consumers. Treadgold said she agrees that millennials, like Thomas, are equipped to deal with the phenomenon of fake news. She offers the advice to young people to continue to think critically when consuming news.

“All they have to do is look and see...You can also use your best judgment. New York Times? Okay. Some guy named Igor? Probably not,” Treadgold said.