Youngsters No Longer Prefer Facebook For News, As WhatsApp Takes Centre Stage

Jun. 14, 2018

Just days after a study from the Pew Research Center suggested thatUS teens are moving away from Facebookin in favor of other social media platforms such asSnapchatandInstagram, the Reuters Institute has published the results of its study that seems to corroborate the findings, especially for the use of social media for news.

At the same time, there has been a rise in the usage of alternative social platforms for news, with WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat emerging as the clear favorites, especially, among younger people. The use of WhatsApp as a news platform has tripled over the past four years to 15%, as it continues to remain more popular in emerging markets than in the West.

According to the lead author of the report, Nic Newman,“We are seeing many switching their focus to more personal, private spaces like messaging apps for sharing and discussing news. This gives people more control over where and how they engage, but also potentially makes public debate and news distribution even more fragmented and opaque”.

One of the most interesting takeaways from the report is that an increasing number of people are starting to distrust social media as a source of news. According to the report, just 23% of people trust news on social media, even as Facebook, Twitter and other online companies have changed their algorithm in recent times to curb the ‘fake news’ menace.

Over half of those polled (54%) said that they were concerned about whether news is real or ‘fake’ on the internet. This is highest in countries like Brazil (85%), Spain (69%) and the United States (64%), and lowest in countries like Germany (37%) and the Netherlands (30%).

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