YouGov conducted a study on how much individuals across the globe rely on social media platforms for their daily intake of the news.
It’s honestly sort of amazing to take a step back and look at how much social media platforms have evolved. We’ve come very, very far from The Facebook and Me at the Zoo when social media was just a novel concept for interacting with friends, watching niche comedy skits, and playing Farmville. Now, social media is this behemoth of a construct that essentially helps represent an entirely different subset of daily life.
We’ve got our real lives and our virtual lives, which is sort of unhealthy, yes, but is also just the norm. Such online sites have transcended being hangout hubs for friends, and are now massive archives of constant information (true or false), and indiscriminate mingling grounds for people of all ages and backgrounds. Sometimes the latter’s good, as different people can learn to become more tolerant after sharing experiences. Most of the time it’s just an excuse for racist trolls to rag on everyone with childish immaturity. Sure, we get it, your parents never loved you, please stop using the n-word.
A big part of social media being this massive library of information is it’s now actively used as a search engine of sorts, which Google isn’t particularly happy about. People often forego proper Googling entirely, relying on TikTok or YouTube for new information, i.e. tutorials or updates on current events. With social media also being such a massive gathering of individuals, it’s also impossible to escape daily news updates, which is why YouGov decided to conduct this study. Garnering information from 43,000 individuals from across the world, the study compiles data into separate age groups to take note of their social media news-oriented tendencies and habits.
Indonesia is the country with the highest number of users utilizing social media as a form of news updates, with 67% of the populace engaging in such behavior. In general, approximately 46% of the average populace relies on social media for current updates, and of those individuals, 23% are within the 18-33 age group, 14% are from the 34-39 group, 7% are aged 50-65, and the remaining 2% are 65 and above. This trend of youngsters consuming the most amount of online news, and the elderly consuming the least is commonly found across the board. All exceptions to the rule are Western countries, where the major consumers of online news are within the 34-39 or 50-65 age groups.
Read next: Social Media Profiles Are Getting Hacked At Alarming Rates, Confirms New Report
It’s honestly sort of amazing to take a step back and look at how much social media platforms have evolved. We’ve come very, very far from The Facebook and Me at the Zoo when social media was just a novel concept for interacting with friends, watching niche comedy skits, and playing Farmville. Now, social media is this behemoth of a construct that essentially helps represent an entirely different subset of daily life.
We’ve got our real lives and our virtual lives, which is sort of unhealthy, yes, but is also just the norm. Such online sites have transcended being hangout hubs for friends, and are now massive archives of constant information (true or false), and indiscriminate mingling grounds for people of all ages and backgrounds. Sometimes the latter’s good, as different people can learn to become more tolerant after sharing experiences. Most of the time it’s just an excuse for racist trolls to rag on everyone with childish immaturity. Sure, we get it, your parents never loved you, please stop using the n-word.
A big part of social media being this massive library of information is it’s now actively used as a search engine of sorts, which Google isn’t particularly happy about. People often forego proper Googling entirely, relying on TikTok or YouTube for new information, i.e. tutorials or updates on current events. With social media also being such a massive gathering of individuals, it’s also impossible to escape daily news updates, which is why YouGov decided to conduct this study. Garnering information from 43,000 individuals from across the world, the study compiles data into separate age groups to take note of their social media news-oriented tendencies and habits.
Indonesia is the country with the highest number of users utilizing social media as a form of news updates, with 67% of the populace engaging in such behavior. In general, approximately 46% of the average populace relies on social media for current updates, and of those individuals, 23% are within the 18-33 age group, 14% are from the 34-39 group, 7% are aged 50-65, and the remaining 2% are 65 and above. This trend of youngsters consuming the most amount of online news, and the elderly consuming the least is commonly found across the board. All exceptions to the rule are Western countries, where the major consumers of online news are within the 34-39 or 50-65 age groups.
Read next: Social Media Profiles Are Getting Hacked At Alarming Rates, Confirms New Report
