Teen News Consumption: RCS vs Society

In an electronic age where news is accessible through a few clicks, teenagers are constantly bombarded with information. We all know that there is not just one way to get news; the days when everyone solely relied on newspapers for the daily news are long gone. And with this transition from people using established sources to social media platforms for news, teens are exposed to more variation in the type of news they’re reading. The teenage years are the common age for kids to start to form their political opinions, and they are likely to be influenced by the sources of news they read. To get information on how teenagers are obtaining their news in 2024, The Riverdale Review sent a survey to the Upper School asking various questions about news consumption and compared it to published data about how teenagers across the U.S. get their news. 

To begin, The Review sent a survey to the Upper School asking various questions about news consumption. Out of the 107 respondents, there was a split in rating social media’s trustworthiness, with the “somewhat unreliable” and “somewhat reliable” categories each getting 43% of the votes. Newspapers were seen as more trustworthy: they were mainly classified as very reliable (46%), and television and friends/family were perceived as somewhat reliable (60% and 58%, respectively). Of the 27% of respondents who frequently use newspapers and magazines to get their news, 88% read The New York Times, 28% read The Wall Street Journal, and 24% read The Washington Post. As The New York Times and The Washington Post are left-leaning, it is likely that most of the political media Riverdalians trust and/or get in general is liberal as well. Despite the notion that newspapers are losing popularity and will eventually be entirely replaced by social media, most Riverdale students seem to think that the reliability of newspapers is unmatched. A similar case applies for television. However, since Riverdalians generally find it less reliable than newspapers, the tradition of watching television for news may decline faster. Meanwhile, friends and family are not only perceived as more reliable than social media, but they seem to be a major news source for a lot of respondents. Given the falling trend for newspapers and news channels, teenagers will likely turn more toward social media and friends/family for information.

Riverdale’s school-wide New York Times subscription may be one of the reasons why Riverdale students seem to read the newspaper more than most American teenagers do. Sophomore William Liu values newspapers as a reliable source of information but emphasizes the importance of consulting various news outlets. “If you care a lot about a specific topic, you should refer to different newspapers,” Liu explains. “Each article has an inherent bias.”  

Although more traditional news sources like newspapers and television are mostly accepted as reliable, teenagers seem to prefer a less reputable source: social media. In fact, 50% of the respondents said that they get a lot or almost all of their news from social media, especially Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. This is a trend across the country: the World Press Institute affirms that 51% of American teens get their news from social media. Instagram and TikTok mostly feature news through influencers rather than professional journalists, and YouTube includes a lot of independently created, opinionated news videos. As a result, news shared through social media is more likely to be biased than news that comes directly from an established news source. Similarly, Liu believes that social media platforms are unreliable for news and factual information. Nonetheless, he views it as a good way to learn about different opinions and perspectives since social media allows people to share their thoughts easily. “[It is fine as long as] you pay attention to what you are looking at,” he says. Sophomore Ella Charen has a more skeptical approach to social media: “It is really hard... most things you watch get ingrained in your brain even if you don’t realize it. [The algorithm feeds me] information that they assume that I will take in and remember. It turns the truth into a lie or a lie into a truth, [making it] hard to decipher.” Surprisingly, most Riverdalians in the survey seemed more open toward social media outlets than both interviewees. 

Many teens both in Riverdale and the U.S. get news from less official sources: social media and friends/family. Especially as politics are becoming increasingly polarized, one’s beliefs and ideologies may resemble more and more that of popular influencers, family members, and friends. “Even candidates that I support or people that I look up to sometimes say things in a confusing way or give evidence to support something that’s a little weird,” says Charen. “It makes it a lot harder to find information and be able to totally trust it.” In this ever-changing and globalized world we live in, it is our job to keep our eyes peeled in the marketplace of ideas. We must ask ourselves: What are we consuming? How should we inspect something? What should we accept? As members of the next voting generation, it is important that we form our own unique opinions rather than just passively internalizing those of other people. Otherwise. we cannot change, neither can we bring change to our future. Grantland Rice once said, “a wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows the public opinion.”