Monday, August 3, 2020

Study Shows Those Who Get News from Social Media Are Less Informed and Engaged

Nearly one out of every five adults in the US get their news from social media platforms. This has started to become quite the trend, and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that it is just a lot easier to get bite sized, easily digestible bits of news from social media during your daily scrolling than it is from actual news organizations. The problem with this is that this has resulted in an increased focus on headlines without much nuance being drawn from the bulk of the article.

Research conducted by the Pew Research Center has revealed that the 18% of American adults that get their news from social media don’t really follow major stories apart from reading their headlines on social media platforms and reading the opinions of those that really aren’t all that qualified to give any opinions.

25% of respondents to the three surveys that the research center conducted said that they got most of their news from news websites or apps, 16% each said that they got their news from either cable or local news channels and 13% said that they got their news from network channels. 8% of respondents preferred radio news whereas 3% said that they still preferred print media. Hence, social media is a more popular way to get news than virtually all other sources of news apart from news websites and apps, which is concerning when you take into account the fact that these sources take a lot of nuance out of the news that is being received. Something really needs to be done about this because of the fact that 18% of US adults are not as knowledgeable as they need to be, and this is particularly concerning when you take into account the fact that this is an election year.

Read next: Bill Gates Donates to Fight Against Coronavirus, Criticizes Social Media for Spread of Misinformation

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