Without giving my age, I’m old enough to remember watching the local news at 6pm and the national news at 6:30 and that was your only news source for the day. It looks like those days are over!
According of a Pew Research poll, nearly a third of adults get at least some of their news on Facebook. At least half of all social media users either share, re-post, obtain and discuss news issues. Eleven percent submit their own content to news media and blogs. Then they took the five top social media sources: Facebook You Tube, Twitter Google, Linkedin. In all of these, the vast majority news consumers of these websites were Gen-Xers or Millennials, people under 50.
We can read a lot of things into these stats, but one thing is that younger people just don’t trust mainstream news anymore. Okay, it’s easy to say we’ve been around the Internet longer than our parents, but I’m convinced something else is going on here. I know there’s a lot of news I get from You Tube and other alternative media that mainstream media won’t touch. I’m not the only one. But you must be careful about some stories. There have been many hoaxes, particularly with celebrity deaths. When you see that, you need to check with mainstream media for that. But what’s to make of this poll (there’s a lot that I haven’t covered; this blog includes a link to that for your own viewing pleasure)? Should this be a wake up call to mainstream news or is this the way it will always be?