Older Americans continue to follow COVID-19 news more closely than younger adults
More than two-thirds of adults ages 65 or older said they were following news of the pandemic very closely.
News Audience Demographics
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News Audience Demographics
Publications
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Older Americans, Black Adults and Americans With Less Education More Interested in Local News
Older Americans, black adults and those with a high school education or less show considerably more interest in local news than their counterparts.
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For many rural residents in U.S., local news media mostly don’t cover the area where they live
A majority of rural Americans say local news media mostly cover an area other than the one where they live.
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Western Europeans Under 30 View News Media Less Positively, Rely More on Digital Platforms Than Older Adults
Younger adults in eight Western European countries are about twice as likely as older adults to get news online than from TV. They also are more critical of the media’s performance and coverage of key issues.
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Younger Americans are better than older Americans at telling factual news statements from opinions
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Younger Americans are better than older Americans at telling factual news statements from opinions
Younger U.S. adults were better than their elders at differentiating between factual and opinion statements in a survey conducted in early 2018.
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Declining share of Americans would find it very hard to give up TV
Just 31% of Americans say it would be very hard to give up their TV, down from 2006. In contrast, roughly half of cellphone owners say it would be very hard to give up their cellphone.
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Among U.S. Latinos, the internet now rivals television as a source for news
On a typical weekday, three-quarters of U.S. Latinos get their news from internet sources, nearly equal to the share who do so from television, according to a 2016 survey of Latino adults by Pew Research Center.
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Fewer Americans rely on TV news; what type they watch varies by who they are
Just 50% of U.S. adults now get news regularly from television, down from 57% a year prior in early 2016.
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Growth in mobile news use driven by older adults
Roughly two-thirds of Americans ages 65 and older now get news on a mobile device (67%), a 24-percentage-point increase over the past year.
