Article by David Elliott: “How do people today stay informed about what’s happening in the world? In most countries, TV, print and websites are becoming less popular, according to a report from the Reuters Institute.
The 2025 Digital News Report, which distills data from six continents and 48 markets, finds that these traditional news media sources are struggling to connect with the public, with declining engagement, low trust and stagnating subscriptions.
So where are people getting their news in 2025? And what might be the impact of these shifts?
Amid political and economic uncertainty, the climate crisis and ongoing conflicts around the world, there is certainly no lack of stories to report on. But audiences are continuing to go to new places to find them – namely, social media, video platforms and online aggregators.
Social media use for news is rising across many countries, although this is more pronounced in the United States, Latin America, Africa and some Southeast Asian countries. In the US, for example, the proportion of people that say social media is their main source of news has risen significantly in the past decade, from around 4% in 2015 to 34% in 2025. The proportion of people accessing news via social media and video networks in the US overtook both TV news and news websites for the first time.
In many European countries, traditional news sources have been more resilient but social media use for news is still rising. In the UK and France, for example, about a fifth of people in each country now use social media as their primary news source compared to well below 10% a decade ago.
Across all of the markets studied by the report, the proportion consuming video continues to grow. And dependence on social media and video networks for news is highest with younger groups – 44% of 18- to 24-year-olds and 38% of 25- to 34-year-olds say these are their main sources of news…(More)”.
