College enrollment is not reported consistently in the available surveys, so adults ages 18–24 and 18–29 are used as transparent college-age proxies. The Pew Research Center figures are U.S.-only, while Reuters Institute figures are global unless stated otherwise. The results show a news routine built around social platforms, search, creators and mobile digital pathways, alongside stronger trust in local news than in several other sources.
Table of contents
- Social and video platforms
- Search, AI and digital pathways
- Influencers and creators
- Trust and perceptions of news
- Breaking, local and election news
- Formats, attention and news avoidance
Social and video platforms
In the Pew Research Center survey conducted August 18–24, 2025, 76% of U.S. adults ages 18–29 said they at least sometimes get news on social media. That was considerably higher than the 28% reported among adults ages 65 and older. The measure describes news access at least sometimes, rather than a daily habit. Pew Research Center, “Young Adults and the Future of News”
The same Pew survey found that regular news use was spread across several major platforms. Among U.S. adults ages 18–29, 43% regularly got news on TikTok, 40% on Instagram, 41% on YouTube and 41% on Facebook. These figures are platform-specific responses, so they overlap: one person may regularly use several platforms for news.
| Platform | U.S. adults ages 18–29 regularly getting news | Survey period |
|---|---|---|
| TikTok | 43% | August 18–24, 2025 |
| YouTube | 41% | August 18–24, 2025 |
| 41% | August 18–24, 2025 | |
| 40% | August 18–24, 2025 |
The broader global environment points in the same direction. In the Reuters Institute 2026 Digital News Report, 30% of all respondents said social media and video networks were their main source of news. Twelve percent said they used only those networks for news, up from 6% in 2020. Social and video networks were more popular than publisher-owned news websites and apps in 30 of 48 markets, and their use as a news source increased by 3 percentage points globally from 2025 to 2026. These Reuters figures describe all respondents, not specifically college-age adults. Reuters Institute, “Overview and key findings of the 2026 Digital News Report”
Search, AI and digital pathways
Social feeds are not the only digital route. In the Pew survey conducted September 8–14, 2025, 69% of U.S. adults ages 18–29 said they at least sometimes get news from Google or other search engines. Search therefore appears alongside social feeds as a major way college-age adults encounter information, especially when they actively look for a topic rather than wait for it to appear in a feed.
The same Pew survey found that 13% of U.S. adults ages 18–29 said they get news from AI chatbots. This is a smaller share than the search-engine figure, but it identifies AI chatbots as an established pathway in the survey period. Reuters Institute reported a broader global increase: weekly use of AI chatbots for news rose from 7% to 10% year over year in its 2026 report. Reuters also found that 56% of respondents used third-party sources for news when social/video networks and AI chatbots were combined. The global figures are not estimates of U.S. college students.
Platform motives and experiences also differ. In Pew’s March 2024 U.S. survey, 65% of X users said keeping up with news was at least a minor reason they used X, including 25% who called it a major reason. Among platform users, 40% of TikTok users, 37% of Facebook users and 30% of Instagram users said they regularly get news on those platforms. In the same survey, 75% of X users said they see breaking-news information in real time on X, compared with 55% of TikTok users and 44% of Instagram users. Pew Research Center, “How Americans Get News on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram”
Influencers and creators
Creators occupy a substantial place in the news mix for younger U.S. adults. In Pew’s survey conducted July 15–August 4, 2024, 37% of adults ages 18–29 said they regularly get news from news influencers on social media. Among U.S. adults who regularly get news from influencers, 65% said influencers helped them better understand current events and civic issues. Seventy percent said the news was at least somewhat different from news they get from other sources, while 31% said they feel a personal connection to a news influencer. Pew Research Center, “Influencers Who Often Post About News, and Who Sees Their Content”
Pew’s early-2024 analysis of 500 news influencers adds context about who produces this material. Seventy-seven percent had no affiliation or background with a news organization, 63% were men, 85% had a presence on X, 50% had a presence on Instagram and 44% had a presence on YouTube. These percentages describe the analyzed accounts, not all creators or all college-age audiences.
The Reuters Institute 2025 Digital News Report found a close competition between individuals and established brands among 18–24-year-olds. In global survey results, 51% said they pay more attention to individual news creators than traditional news brands on social and video networks. Thirty-nine percent said they pay more attention to traditional news brands than individual creators. Reuters Institute, “Understanding young news audiences at a time of rapid change”
Trust and perceptions of news
Access through a platform does not automatically mean equal confidence in every source. In Pew’s survey of U.S. adults ages 18–29 conducted September 8–14, 2025, 50% said they had a lot or some trust in information from social media sites. The corresponding share was 51% for national news organizations and 65% for local news organizations. Local news therefore had the highest reported trust among the three source categories in this comparison.
Younger adults also apply a broad definition of who can be a journalist. In Pew’s survey conducted April 14–20, 2025, 41% of U.S. adults ages 18–29 considered someone making their own news videos or social-media posts to be a journalist. Fifty-six percent considered someone writing their own news newsletter to be a journalist, and 55% applied that description to someone reporting on or hosting a news podcast. Pew Research Center, “Young Adults and the Future of News”
The Reuters Institute’s global 2025 survey reported that 37% of 18–24-year-olds trusted news, 9 percentage points below the share among people ages 55 and older. Views about neutrality also differed by age: 32% of 18–24-year-olds said it makes no sense for news outlets to be neutral on certain issues, compared with 19% of people ages 55 and older. These are global age-group comparisons, not measures of students enrolled at colleges.
Breaking, local and election news
News consumption among younger adults includes local politics. In Pew’s U.S. survey conducted June 3–23, 2024, 56% of adults ages 18–29 said they at least sometimes get news about local politics. Seventy-one percent often or sometimes got local political news on social media, while 53% of U.S. adults under 30 at least sometimes got it from local news outlets. Pew Research Center, “Who follows local political news in the US, and how they get it”
For political and election news, social media was the most common route for 46% of U.S. adults under 30 in Pew’s survey conducted August 26–September 8, 2024. Television was the primary source for 10%. Among adults ages 30–49, 23% named social media as their most common way to get political and election news, half the under-30 share. Pew Research Center, “Where Americans turn for election news”
Real-time updates are especially visible on social platforms. In Pew’s March 2024 survey, 79% of social-media users under 50 said they see breaking news in real time on X. Among Instagram users, 51% of those under 50 said they see breaking news as events are happening, compared with 29% of users ages 50 and older. Among TikTok news consumers, 84% said they ever get news from people they do not know personally, beyond news outlets, journalists, influencers or celebrities.
Reuters Institute reported that 60% of 18–24-year-olds in its global 2025 survey said they feel always connected to the internet. That connection can make rapid updates easier to encounter, but it does not identify how often a student verifies a claim or follows a story beyond its first post.
Formats, attention and news avoidance
The main source of news has shifted toward social media among young adults globally. Reuters Institute’s 2025 global survey found that 39% of 18–24-year-olds said social media was their main source of news, up from 21% in 2015. News websites and apps were the main source for 24%, down from 36% in 2015. These are long-term comparisons for the same age band, not forecasts.
The 2026 Reuters report describes a broader decline in news interest. Across all respondents, 46% were extremely or very interested in news, down from 59% in 2021. Forty-two percent said they avoid the news sometimes or often. The share classified as “news lovers” fell from 29% in 2021 to 22% in 2026, while “casual users” rose from 16% to 25%. These measurements concern the overall report population rather than college-age adults specifically.
Pew’s U.S. survey conducted March 20–26, 2023, shows why social formats may remain attractive even when trust is complicated. Among adults under 30, 36% preferred social media over news outlets for opinions on an issue, compared with 13% who preferred news outlets. For up-to-date information while an event was happening, 35% preferred social media and 21% preferred news outlets. Pew Research Center, “What Americans like and dislike about getting news on social media”
Taken together, the figures describe college-age news consumption as distributed across feeds, search, AI tools, creators, local outlets and live updates. The age bands are useful proxies for campus audiences, but they should not be read as enrollment rates or as a direct estimate of how college students behave.