Young People and Social Networks: News Consumption Habits and Credibility of the News

Abstract

Social networks have become extremely effective platforms for the dissemination of up-to-the-minute news among ever wider sectors of the population, particularly among young people, for whom these channels are a preferred means of socialization and of understanding their environment. The main objective of this study is to analyze the news consumption of the Spanish population aged between 15 and 24 years on social networks, with the intention of understanding how they access news, what interactions take place, and what factors engender trust, as per an online questionnaire administered to a national sample representative of the population under study (n=1,067) and five focus groups (n=97). The findings reflect a high daily exposure to the networks, which are the most common means of news consumption for young people, who show little inclination to fact-check. They receive most news items incidentally; usually, they simply read them or, at most, share them with their contacts, and they tend to attribute very little trustworthiness to them. However, the analysis of sociodemographic factors shows that variables such as age, educational level, and ideological positioning influence the credibility that young people give to the current affairs content that the networks disseminate and to the sources from which they come.