More teens are abstaining from traditional media channels and getting their news on social media platforms, a new research by Ofcom has found. The number of users who consume news and other content on TikTok has grown by 800,000. In 2020, the number jumped to 3.9 million by 2022.
In the very first instance ever, Instagram becomes the world's most used news site for younger users and is used by 29% of teens by 2022, with TikTok and YouTube closely behind. Print, TV and radio news channels continue to predominate in the older age group.
The rise in news consumed through TikTok is driven by younger age groups . 50% of those who read content on the site are 16-24. The amount of people who consume news on the video sharing website is comparable to those who use Sky News. Sky News website and app, Ofcom said.
TikTok users who participated in the study reported that they receive more news from "other users they follow" (47 percent) as opposed to news agencies who have their own accounts (24 percent).
In the last few years, news stories originate through the platform. This week, a clip of an student getting threatened by a man in an Cardiff road was watched more than 2 millions of times and was picked up by news media.
Yih-Choung Tseh, Ofcom's group director of strategy and research, stated in a statement released by the company that teens today are "increasingly likely to not pick up newspapers or watch the news on TV" and prefer to stay up-to-date by "scrolling through their feeds on social media".
"And although young people may find information on social media less trustworthy however, they rate these sites higher for providing an array of perspectives on current news stories," he added.
Despite its recent rise in popularity the site is not trusted by more than a third (33%) of young users (30 percent) who were surveyed were able to trust the news content that they found via TikTok.
The decline in print newspapers has been evident for a long time However, the decline over the past couple of years was awe-inspiring. In the year 2020 35 percent of people (the majority of those over 55) were still reading newspapers However, this has now decreased to 24%, an increase of nearly one-third.