How the audiences of 30 major news sources differ by age

The audiences of 30 major news sources in the United States vary widely by age, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

The median age of American adults who regularly get news from Univision is 39 years old – the youngest of any source included in the survey. By comparison, the median ages of adults who regularly get news from Newsmax and Breitbart are 63 and 62 years old – the oldest in the survey.

The median age of all U.S. adults is 47.

Univision is one of two major Spanish-language TV networks included in the survey; the other, Telemundo, has a median audience age of 42. Most Americans who get news from these outlets are Hispanic, and Hispanic adults in the U.S. tend to be younger than U.S. adults overall. 

How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis as part of a larger study tracking news consumption and trust across a wide range of news sources.

We regularly ask people about their news habits on various platforms (e.g., television, print, radio and digital) and their levels of trust in information from social media and national/local news organizations in general. This study was designed to be more specific, looking at Americans’ familiarity with, usage of, and views toward 30 individual news sources.

For this analysis, we surveyed 9,482 U.S. adults from March 10 to 16, 2025. Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Interviews were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.

For a full age breakdown of the audience of each news source, refer to this detailed table.

How we chose these 30 news sources

We selected 30 news sources based on a variety of measures, including audience size and previous survey results. We also wanted to prioritize a range of news sources across different platforms, as well as both legacy news outlets and nontraditional news sources, all while keeping the list from becoming too long for survey respondents. This selection process is not perfect; we acknowledge that no list of 30 sources could represent the entirety of today’s diverse and changing media environment. We believe this group of 30 provides an appropriate snapshot of media brands to help us study Americans’ changing news habits. To learn more, read the FAQ and methodology.

The Daily Wire and The New York Times also have comparatively young audiences, with median ages of 42 and 43, respectively.

Newsmax and Breitbart have predominantly Republican or Republican-leaning audiences. Though Republicans overall tend to be older than Democrats, Newsmax and Breitbart stand out even compared with other sources that have audiences with a similar partisan lean. The Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast with a Republican-leaning audience, has a median audience age of 44.

The three major TV broadcast networks – CBS News, NBC News and ABC News – all have audiences that tend to be older than U.S. adults overall. The median ages of these networks’ audiences are 58, 57 and 55, respectively. Two major cable networks, Fox News and CNN, also have audiences that tend to be older than U.S. adults overall (with median ages of 55 and 50, respectively).

These five broadcast and cable networks are the most widely used news sources among those included in the survey, and each is traditionally consumed through television. Their median audience ages reflect the fact that older Americans are far more likely than younger Americans to get news on television.

Related: How the audiences of 30 major news sources differ in their levels of education

Some Americans don’t regularly get news from any of the sources studied

Around one-in-ten U.S. adults (12%) do not regularly get news from any of the 30 major news sources we asked about in our survey.

Younger adults are most likely to fall into this group: 19% of adults under 30 say they do not regularly get news from any of these sources. That percentage is 16% among adults ages 30 to 49, 7% among those ages 50 to 64, and 4% among those 65 and older.

This pattern reflects the growing proportion of young Americans who are turning to newer information sources, including social media and news influencers. Adults under 30 are more likely than any other age group to turn to social media for news and less likely than older adults to get news from print publications, radio or television.

Younger Americans are also most likely to turn to news influencers, listen to podcasts and generally follow the news less closely. In 2022, only 19% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they followed the news all or most of the time, compared with 64% of adults 65 and older.

For more information about the audiences of the news sources in this analysis, refer to our News Media Tracker. For a full age breakdown of the audience of each news source, refer to this detailed table.