New generations and how they consume information

Young people aged 18 to 25 are building their own information systems, and they will not wait for traditional media…

Young people aged 18 to 25 are building their own information systems, and they will not wait for traditional media to catch up.

Research by FT Strategies and the Knight Lab across three continents confirms what many already suspected: for this generation, credibility comes not from journalism awards or century-old brands but from lived experience and subject expertise. They prefer someone who went through something firsthand, or who is genuinely expert in a topic, over an established outlet telling them what happened. And when they read about climate change or civil rights, the question is not "what happened?" but "what can I do?"

The report argues that this is not a problem of formats or platforms. It is a problem of purpose. Traditional models assume passive audiences who will eventually "grow into" our content. But this generation learned to filter information through networks of trust in short videos, to corroborate facts in online communities and to build meaning through digital conversations with people they feel they know.

Around the world, newsrooms are trying to "adapt to young people" while keeping intact the structures that create the disconnect. The problem is not the platform we use. It is whether we are willing to redefine what doing journalism means now that the perception of authority has stopped coming from the institution and started coming from experience.

The full report is at next-gen-news.com.