Americans are following the news less closely than they used to

The share of Americans who say they follow the news all or most of the time has decreased since 2016, according to nearly a decade’s worth of Pew Research Center surveys. This shift comes amid changes in the platforms people use for news and declining trust in news organizations.

How we did this

To examine how closely Americans follow the news, Pew Research Center conducted this analysis using 11 survey waves from 2016 to 2025. The most recent survey was of 5,153 U.S. adults from Aug. 18 to 24, 2025.

Everyone who took part in this 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 methodology.

As of August 2025, 36% of U.S. adults say they follow the news all or most of the time. That is down from 51% in 2016, the first time we asked this question.

In turn, growing shares of Americans say they follow the news less closely:

• 38% now say they follow it some of the time, up from 31% in 2016.
• 18% say they follow it only now and then, compared with 12% in 2016.

Meanwhile, the share who say they hardly ever follow the news has been relatively stable (7% in 2025, 5% in 2016).

People in every age group are less likely now than in 2016 to say they follow the news all or most of the time. But older Americans remain more likely than younger adults to do so. 

For example, 62% of adults 65 and older now say they follow the news all or most of the time. That’s down 13 percentage points since 2016.

The decline is similar – 12 points – among adults under 30. However, this age group followed the news much less closely to begin with: 15% now say they follow the news all or most of the time, down from 27% in 2016.

This decline in Americans’ attention to the news over the years has also occurred across other demographic groups, including education, gender, race, ethnicity and political party. But the drop has been steeper for some groups than others.

For instance, 57% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican said they followed the news all or most of the time in 2016. In 2025, 36% say the same – a decrease of 21 percentage points. By comparison, the share of Democrats and Democratic leaners who closely follow the news has dropped by 10 points, from 49% to 39%.

Republicans’ trust in national and local news outlets has also declined more than Democrats’ since 2016. And Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to both use and trust many major news sources.

However, Americans saying they follow the news at lower rates does not necessarily mean they’re getting less news than before. For example, 54% of U.S. adults said in early 2025 that they mostly get political news because they happen to come across it, rather than because they’re looking for it (45%).

Note: This is an update of a post originally published Oct. 24, 2023. Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the methodology.