The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy at Harvard University just issued an interesting report on "Young People and News". Based on a random sample of 1800 teens, young adults (ages 18 to 30) and older adults (over the age of 31), they have concluded that frequency and depth of exposure to news is dropping dramatically.

We have reported here on the decline of newspaper readership every year. But it might be surprising to know that only 16% of those between 18 and 30 and a mere 9% of those 12 to 17 read the news daily. In fact, the report states that nearly half of both of these groups say they rarely if ever read a newspaper. Two-thirds of those that do read the paper say they usually “skim through the news sections” versus “reading quite a few stories.”

The idea that fewer younger people are reading the newspaper is not new. But there is a general belief that instead they are switching to the internet as their primary source of information. But only 20% of teens and 22% of young adults report getting news from the internet on a daily basis, which is about the same for adults (20%). One-third of the teens and almost half of the young adults surveyed said they rarely get news from the internet. And the majority of those who do are not seeking it out but “just happen to come across it.”

So where are young people getting their information? Despite the growth of hours spent online, it appears that TV is still the main source of news for all ages. 31% of teens and young adults say they watch the national news everyday and local TV is about the same. The numbers are almost double for adults. But the attention span of the younger audience is shorter, with about 60% of teenagers and young adults saying “they watch for a while and switch.” Overall, 28% of teens and 24% of teens said they pay almost no attention to the news regardless of the source.

So what does this all mean? On one level, it means that communicators can’t rely on traditional or even digital news channels if they want to reach a broad group of young people. For this group, word of mouth and experiential activities are the most powerful tools.

More importantly, even though news is now everywhere, it appears that a significant percentage of the population either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. That may be the bigger problem. This is a big challenge for the future of our industry and our society. As an industry that relies upon communication, the future of our job will transcend delivering messages to the media. We are also going to be responsible for encouraging people to “tune in” to the media to receive the messages, which may be an even harder task.

Submitted by Fred Cook