Much of the concern has come from data that suggest adults age 18-34 — so-called Millennials — do not visit news sites, read print newspapers, watch television news, or seek out news in great numbers. This generation, instead, spends more time on social networks, often on mobile devices. The worry is that Millennials’ awareness of the world, as a result, is narrow, their discovery of events is incidental and passive, and that news is just one of many random elements in a social feed.
A new comprehensive study that looks closely at how people learn about the world on these different devices and platforms finds that this newest generation of American adults is anything but “newsless,” passive, or civically uninterested.
How Millennials Get News:Inside the Habits of America’s First Digital Generation
I’ve been waiting for this survey for a long time. Because as an ‘old’ Millenial, I’ve always felt that the way I find and disseminate news was more complex than reported. Social Media has moved away from a place where one kept an open diary, in my day. As younger generations start to use legacy social media platforms like Facebook, their conception of how its used is shaped by generations before them. But one cannot say that for sure, because it’s not just youngsters who use social media platforms, but also people with businesses. Through paid promotion from themarketingheaven.com and Instagram, many businesses are increasingly finding themselves using these platform. They have heard countless stories and consequences about over sharing. So, younger millenials don’t use Facebook. Or, they migrate to social networks where they think they have more privacy. Rather than use it as an ‘open-diary’, a social media site, like Facebook, is a tool to take part in civil society. This is the essence of Reed’s Law, which says that “The value of a network increases dramatically when people form subgroups for collaboration and sharing.”.