Hank Silverberg, wtop.com
WASHINGTON – The number of newspaper readers has been dwindling for years, and a new national survey indicates the Internet may be the news medium of choice for people under age 30.
The Pew Research Center survey found 39 percent of those under 30 say they read yesterday’s news online or on mobile devices, with 78 percent of those people getting their news via cellphone.
About the same number of people under 30 said they saw news on a social networking site the previous day (33 percent) as they watched television news (34 percent). Only 13 percent had read a newspaper in print or online.
Thirty-three percent of respondents said they’d listened to the radio for news the day before.
“TV has really held on to its audience through the rise of the Internet, but that seems to be changing for younger people,” says Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
The number of people under 30 watching TV news is down from six years ago when 49 percent said they watched TV news the previous day.
Doherty says “appointment news” — sitting down to read, watch or listen to the news — is rapidly being replaced by mobile news sources, such as iPhones and iPads.
Social media is becoming the dominant form of news consumption among young people, Doherty says. A rising number of young people, 19 percent, are getting the majority of news from social media websites like Facebook or Twitter compared to 9 percent in 2010.
The Pew Research Center survey, conducted between May 9 and June 3, questioned 3,003 adults. The poll has a margin of error of 2.1 percent.
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