Julia Stoll
Research expert covering TV and video media
News consumption in the United States - statistics & facts
News consumption among audiences in the United States now most commonly occurs online, with social media the go-to option for many. In fact, many social media users now get their news from the networks they use. The most popular social platforms for news are X, Truth Social, and TikTok. Using social networks to keep up to date is a habit often associated with Gen Z and millennials, but this is changing. Now, older consumers are also demonstrating a preference for social platforms over legacy news media.
How is news consumption changing?
Social media ranks as the most popular daily news source among 13- to 34-year-olds, and, interestingly, 35- to 49-year-olds were marginally less likely to go to social media to keep themselves up to date than to watch network news. Those aged 65 years and above were the only group with a clear preference for TV and streaming news, while newspapers were among the least used news sources for this demographic. Indeed, print news publications have long struggled to retain audiences, but this growing trend to move online rather than get news via television could foreshadow the gradual decline of TV news. Primetime cable news network viewership is falling and fell to new lows in 2025. That year, CNN and MSNBC recorded an average of less than 110,000 prime-time viewers aged 25 to 54 years, and leading network Fox had less than half the viewers recorded five years earlier.Â
Meanwhile, podcast news is gaining ground, in particular among younger audiences. Nearly 40 percent of adults aged 18 to 49 years used podcasts as a news source at least sometimes in 2025, up by around ten percentage points compared to 2020. This appetite for newer, digital-native formats extends to AI as well: chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini are becoming increasingly popular news channels, especially among the youngest consumers, who are also more likely than older adults to consider AI platforms trustworthy sources of information. Yet, the relationship between news consumption and trust in news does not always work in the way one might expect.Â
The issue of trust
Trust in news is a complex topic, with consumers’ political stance, a news brand’s reputation, and myriad other factors affecting how audiences perceive the news they read and whether they consider the source to be reliable. Especially significant though is consumers’ willingness to get news regularly from a source they have difficulty trusting. Local and national news may be among the least used but are more likely to be trusted than independent creators and AI chatbots.
