• The percentage of people under 25 who never consume news (7%) is twice that of the general population

• Nearly half of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 (46%) get their news from non-specialized influencers, twice the average 24%)

Never before has a generation been so connected and, at the same time, so disconnected from information. The data survey young Spaniards between the ages of 18 and 24 reveal a group , compared to the rest of the population, enquiry the news enquiry , has less interest in information, trusts it less, and relies more on social media and digital platforms to access current events. This comes as no surprise. But the data also data a worrying shadow: the information gap between those under 25 and the general population is steadily widening. While the frequency of news consumption has declined in recent years, it has fallen even more sharply among young people. While interest in news has declined, it has fallen even more sharply among those under 25. Given these data, understanding this generation’s news habits goes far beyond a sociological question. Understanding how young people stay informed, what sources they use, which ones they trust, and asking why they are turning away from traditional media is core topic anticipating how news consumption will evolve and what role the media will play in the future.

Frequency of News Consumption

The group accesses the news less regularly on a daily basis than the rest. Only 39% do so several times a day, compared to 50% of the total (-11 pp). And the difference is even more pronounced for “once a day” consumption (15% vs. 28%, -13 pp). In contrast, young people consume news more frequently on an intermittent weekly basis: 11% do so 2–3 times a week (vs. 5% of the total). The percentage of young people who never consume news is double that of the total population (7% vs. 3%).

Furthermore, a comparison of data recent years—2019, 2021, 2023, and 2026— sample the gap in news consumption frequency between young people aged 18 to 24 and the general population has been widening. This progressive divergence is particularly B looking at those who consume news at least once a day: in 2019, there was a 10-point difference between those under 25 and the general population; by 2026, this gap had grown to 25 percentage points. Also striking is the growing gap among those who never access news, which has quadrupled over the past five years (from 1 percentage point in 2021 to 4 points in 2026).

These data that the generational gap in news-consumption habits is widening and that a trend is taking hold in which young people are less engaged in regular news consumption compared to the general population, whose frequency of news consumption has also declined.

 
Interest in the news

When it comes to interest in the information, the gap is also B. Only 33% of group say they are very or extremely interested, compared to 54% of the general population. In contrast, 43% of the young people sample report moderate sample (“somewhat interested”), which is the dominant category in this segment. Disinterest is also twice as high as in the general population: 21% vs. 10%. 

As with the frequency of news consumption, the generational gap in interest in the news has gradually widened in recent years, particularly due to the decline in high levels of interest among young audiences, which has been more pronounced than the average the average population. In 2026, 54% of the total population reports being very or extremely interested in the news, while among young people this figure drops to 33%, representing a gap of 21 percentage points. In 2021, that gap was 16 points, and in 2019, it was 13. 

Trust in the News

Younger people are also more skeptical of the news. Forty-eight percent of those under 25 sample with the statement that most news can be trusted, compared to 39% of the general population. Only one in four young people between the ages of 18 and 24 (25%) trust the news in general, 8 points below the average 33%). 

Unlike in the case of news consumption frequency and interest, the gap between young people and the general population regarding trust has not widened; between 2019 and 2026, the gap has remained more or less stable, with slight variations over the years, both in terms of trust and distrust.

If we look at trust in the news people consume themselves, the patron saint emerges patron saint young people trust less and distrust more than the general population. But it is significant that, while among the general population, distrust of information reverses when asked about news they consume themselves (shifting from a negative to a positive balance), this does not happen among those under 25: although they trust the news they consume (33%) more than news in general (25%), distrust (34%) still outweighs trust (33%).

Furthermore, this group trusts less and is more skeptical in almost all areas of news consumption, including social media. Although social media is the source of news for nearly half of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 (47%), 55% are skeptical of the news circulating on these platforms, and only 15% trust it. These data the great paradox in group relationship group information: they consume news primarily through social media, yet consider it the source reliable source . Perhaps this is why their trust in the news they consume fails to exceed the trust they place in news in general.

People under 25 are also more skeptical than the general population of the information they find on search engines and the answers provided by AI chatbots . However, chatbots are the only information channel in which younger people place the same level of trust as the general population, although that level of trust is leave 18%).

The "Ninis" of the Information Age

More than half of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 (53%) fall into the leave , low interest profile , a proportion much higher than that recorded for the general population (35%). Furthermore, although the group “NEETs” has declined in the general population this year, their issue grow among the youngest age group.

At the other end of the spectrum, only 13% of those under 25 combine high trust with high interest in the news, compared to 22% of the total population. It is also significant that the group young people with leave and high interest is considerably smaller than in the general population (21% versus 32%). data , these data confirm the younger generation’s distant relationship with the news ecosystem, which is marked above all by a strong lack of interest.

The trend in recent years does not inspire optimism, as the gap between younger people and the general population has widened. The gap is growing most notably in the categories involving leave leave and high interest (the gap widens from 1 percentage point in 2021 to 11 points in 2026) and leave and low interest (the gap widens from 12 points in 2021 to 18 points this year).

Less TV, more AI and social media

When it comes to sources of news, there are very marked differences between young people aged 18 to 24 and the general population. While television—whether news programs or 24-hour news channels—remains the primary source of news for a large portion of the general population—41% of those who consumed news in the week prior to the survey identified survey as such—its share drops by nearly 20 percentage points (23%) among those under 25. In contrast, social media plays a central role in young people’s news consumption: nearly half (47%) of those under 25 who accessed a source the week prior to the survey as their source of information—twice the rate among the general population (24%). 

Although only 3% of those under 25 (and 1% of the general population) identify AI chatbots as their source news source , up to 19% of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 report having used that source week prior to the survey—11 points above the average . This is almost the same difference—11 points—that separates young adults who used social media as source that week (59%) from the general population (47%). In the case of television, the gap—this time in favor of the general population over younger adults—is even more pronounced: 38% of young adults cited it as source in the past week, nearly 20 points below the average 56%).

This survey also took a close look at the historical relationship with media outlets that were not used in the past week, asking those who reported not enquiry the previous week whether these were outlets they had never used weekly as source or whether they had used them in the past but had since stopped. Notable among the responses is the 64% of young people aged 18 to 24 who have never used print media as source weekly source —24 percentage points higher than the general population (40%)—and the 56% of those under 25 who have never regularly obtained news via radio, 23 percentage points above the average . And when it comes to people who have stopped using certain media, 44% of the youngest respondents (compared to 29% of the average) indicate that they used to use television as source news source but no longer do so.

Influencers and newsmakers

Another notable difference between younger people and the general population lies in their resource content creators or influencers as source news and their perception of the informational content these creators provide. People under 25 turn to them as source news significantly more than the average the general population. In the week prior to the survey, 36% of young people consumed information from individual content creators or influencers who focus primarily on news, compared to 23% of the general population (+13 pp), and 46% followed news from creators or influencers who primarily publish content on other topics but occasionally discuss the news—nearly double the average the general population (24%).

In addition, young people aged 18 to 24 view news creators and influencers in a clearly more positive light—compared to their perception of traditional media—than the general population.

The difference is evident across all the attributes surveyed, but for some of them, the gap between this group and the general public is very B. The greatest differences are found in the view that news influencers are more entertaining than traditional media (69% among young people versus 40% overall), the idea that their content is easier to understand (54% compared to 30% among the general population), that they are more relatable (61% compared to 39%), and more authentic (39% compared to 21%) than traditional media. This suggests that young people value more personal and informal communication styles, which differ from the conventions of conventional journalism. Content creators or news influencers seem to connect with young people because of their ability to make the news more understandable and entertaining, and to bridge the gap between current events and personal experiences.

Furthermore, although those under 25 acknowledge that traditional media surpass influencers in terms of knowledge, reliability, and impartiality, that advantage is much less pronounced than among the general population. Regarding reliability, the gap between those who think content creators are less reliable than conventional media (37%) and those who say they are more reliable (14%) is 23 points; among 18- to 24-year-olds, the gap narrows to 4 points (25% consider them less reliable and 21% consider them more reliable). As for perceptions of impartiality, the gap narrows from 23 points in the general population (36% think influencers are less impartial and 13% believe they are more so) to 15 points among young people (31% and 16%). Regarding the level of knowledge, the gap in the general population is 20 points (35% say influencers are less knowledgeable, while 15% say they surpass the media in this regard), and among younger people, it narrows to 5 points (26% believe content creators know less, and 21% believe they are more knowledgeable than traditional media).

All of this points to a shift in the legitimacy of news toward individual figures and formats and styles that differ from those offered by traditional media.