Gen Z is increasingly using social media for news. What does this say about the current news environment?

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When she wants the latest news, Norah Martin, a 21-year-old recent graduate from Penn State, doesn’t turn on the television or tune into the radio. Instead, she finds it on her phone via Instagram or TikTok.

Martin isn’t alone. About half of U.S. adults say they get news from social media at least sometimes, according to a September 2025 Pew Research study. The report found that while the number has remained steady over the last few years, people ages 18-29 are more likely to be regular news consumers on social platforms.

Social media gives individuals easy access to information in ways that haven’t previously been seen, said Rachel Lobdell, who spoke on Committee of Seventy’s panel “The Information Crisis: Media, Trust, and Democracy” at “The Promise of Democracy: 250 Years and the Path Ahead” summit in July.

“The way that people get information now is significantly different than the way they got information five, 10, 15 years ago,” Lobdell said. “It’s a much more democratized information system … more people have access to others’ opinions, perspectives, news.”

A changing news landscape

People receive news on social media platforms in various ways. Some purposefully follow the accounts of mainstream news organizations, while others turn to independent creators.

According to the 2025 Pew study, about 1 in 5 adults regularly get their news from news influencers, who are defined as “individuals who have a large following on social media and often post about news or political or social issues.”

Martin watches videos from news influencers, some of whom she follows and others that organically appear on her social media feeds.

“I feel like sometimes, I’ll see things on Instagram or TikTok, and then it’ll cause me to go [to] whatever that topic is,” Martin said.

However, it’s not always simple to classify what counts as news on social platforms. What people define as news is constantly changing because of social media, said Lance Holbert, director of the Leonore Annenberg Institute for Civics at the University of Pennsylvania.

“News as an institution was defined basically by older generations and by elites as to what counted as news and what did not count as news,” Holbert said. “It’s much more now defined by individual audience members.”

Lobdell said social media, by design, has made it so that individuals no longer need to turn to large platforms to receive news.

“It’s a much less controlled top-down environment,” Lobdell said. “That also has its downsides. There can be a lot of confusion over what is true and what is not true.”

Distrust in mainstream media

Americans’ overall trust in national and local news organizations is declining, according to a Pew Research 2025 study. This decline was measured across Republican and Democratic voters and in all age groups. While trust in local news remains slightly higher than in national news, both have declined.

The same poll found an overall growing trust in news from social media. Trust remains lower than in national and local news, but social media was the only of the three to see any increase, according to the poll.

Lobdell said distrust in the media can come from various places. Parallel information systems, she explained, have always existed, and some communities have been consistently undercovered or even harmed by coverage.

“Whether they just didn’t see their experience and themselves reflected in the coverage, whether their communities were covered with stereotypes or victim blaming, there’s just been a long history of mistrusting institutions, which is well earned and well founded, as we have a long history of discrimination in this country,” Lobdell said.

A lack of trust in media can lead individuals, specifically people who have been targeted by misinformation campaigns, to question broader systems or structures, Lobdell said. She explained that there is a “definite connection” between a lack of trustworthy information and civic engagement.

“Once you start to get a sense that you don’t know what to trust online, it really bleeds into your everyday life,” Lobdell said. “You start to question school authorities, doctors. You’re just not sure what is true, and that can really lead people to, let’s say, not take medical advice, or not show up to vote because they feel like they don’t even know what is true.”

Independent journalists, creators and consumers

Social media offers a unique opportunity for individuals to report news and reach a wide audience without needing to be affiliated with a larger organization. Lobdell said that while receiving news, people tend to trust information when it’s given by an individual and not an organization.

According to the September 2025 Pew Research study, 52% of adults who get news from creators in the news influencer category say most of these influencers are independent, or not affiliated with a broader organization.

The background and appearance of a creator, Lobdell said, can play a role in their influence.

“People tend to trust people that look like them, or have similar experiences, or in some way they feel a kinship with, and that is one of the things that makes creators so powerful,” she said.

Lobdell said creators are also successful in building trust because they use conversational language that sounds like a chat with a friend. Namely, they talk to their audiences as members of a community rather than from a position of privilege or status.

“Creators are really talented at not only telling you what happened, but also telling you what it means for you individually, what it means for people like you, for your community and also what you can do about it,” Lobdell said. “I think connecting the dots between what is happening, what it means for you and the agency that you have to do something about it breeds trust.”

Aaron Parnas, an independent journalist with millions of followers across TikTok, Instagram, Substack and other platforms, said he believes he’s seen so much success because he meets audiences where they’re at, which is on social media. Parnas, who had family in Kyiv, Ukraine, started making videos after the 2022 Russian invasion.

“I was talking to Ukrainian citizens as Russia was preparing to invade and then invaded, and I felt as though not enough young people specifically knew about what was happening overseas,” Parnas said. “I was scrolling on social media, and I didn’t really see too much coverage on it, so I just opened up a TikTok account and started sharing my family’s experiences.”

Because of his connections in Ukraine, Parnas was frequently breaking news an hour or two before American outlets. Within a week, Parnas had 1 million followers on TikTok.

Since then, Parnas’ content has shifted to general American politics and legal topics, as his background is in law. Parnas said that as a journalist, he does not consider himself a creator or influencer. His content, he said, focuses on topics he understands well so he can break them down for others.

“If I don’t understand the story myself the first several times reading it … I probably won’t cover it,” Parnas said. “I will leave it to someone else. I think for me, if I can understand the story or a tip or a court order, I’ll cover it, and that’s kind of how I operate.”

Dolan said she likes content that breaks down complex political topics because it’s formatted in a way that’s easier to understand.

“I remember seeing posts before of, ‘OK, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is going to happen. What does that really mean, though?’ And it’s broken down…. It’s easier for me to digest,” Martin said.

Parnas said his audience spans age groups and differs between social media platforms. The content that gets the most engagement, he said, is original reporting. Recently, this has meant coverage of the Epstein files.

“I’ve reviewed hundreds of thousands of Epstein files myself, spoken with numerous survivors myself on almost a daily basis at this point, and I’ve really stayed on that beat. So that’s something that people really come to me for. Anything that they’re not necessarily getting elsewhere is definitely what does well,” Parnas said.

Parnas said he’s built trust by disclosing when facts change or when he gets something wrong. He also challenges people who consume his content to fact-check it themselves.

“I think over time, people have seen that I don’t really get things wrong,” Parnas said. “It’s accurate information, and trust is built over time. It’s not just an overnight thing.”

Strengthening understanding and attitudes

Gen Z’s social media news consumption is not one-size-fits-all. Chloe Palm-Rittle, a 22-year-old recent graduate from Saint Joseph’s University who studied political science, described herself as a frequent news consumer and uses social media for much of her news.

However, Palm-Rittle said she prefers to consume news from local outlets and national news organizations rather than individuals. She follows the organizations on social media.

“I think I’m pretty good with trying to vary the size of the source and how they’re funded,” Palm-Rittle said. “I do like bigger ones like the Washington Post, Politico, New York Times, but I love, especially when I’m trying to get more into local politics, independent sources like Spotlight PA.”

Palm-Rittle said she tries to stay away from Instagram Reels because the short-form content has harmed her attention span and she worries that creators offer one-sided perspectives. Instead, she likes it when an account has articles linked in their bio so she can get a fuller picture of a topic.

Social media algorithms, she added, can funnel users into an echo chamber with limited viewpoints.

“I think it’s just such so harmful for our greater understanding of everything that’s happening in the political world because when you’re so focused on just that one point of view, it really limits our critical thinking and understanding,” Palm-Rittle said.

Exposure to political or news-related content on social media can reinforce a person’s belief systems, Holbert said.

“When you come into contact with information that you agree with, it tends to make you agree with it all the more, whereas when you have contact with things that you don’t agree with, you really start to disagree with it all the more,” Holbert said.

This, he said, can lead to changes in behavior.

“What it does is it strengthens attitudes, and those strengthening of attitudes, of course, can then be a better predictor of a behavior,” Holbert said. “If you have stronger attitudes about something, you’re more likely to be behaviorally engaged. So it can indeed indirectly generate behavior in that way.”

Holbert said he wouldn’t characterize the changing news environment as positive or negative, or right or wrong. It’s just different. In the end, it’s all about balance.

“There are upsides that exist to social media in the sense of people that didn’t have voice before or given voice, but also that has to be balanced with more traditional news content,” Holbert said.