The digital citizenship project YouNDigital surveyed 1,362 young individuals residing in Portugal, aged between 15 and 24 years, categorizing them into four distinct groups based on their approach to news consumption.
The first group, termed “Leisure-Focused Digital Explorers,” comprises 50.27% male responses and shows an interest in sports, technology, health, and entertainment news. This cohort engages with media primarily for conversation and leisure, perceiving news as “biased” and “boring,” especially political content.
This group identifies ‘YouTubers’ as a means to understand “what’s happening in the world,” with social media being their primary information source over newspapers, radio, or educators.
The “Diverse Topic Digital Explorers” group features 59% female responses, interested in health, entertainment, technology, society, education, and economy. They turn to ‘Instagrammers’ to stay informed about world events.
These young individuals find news “biased” and having a “negative impact” on their “life and mood,” using media mainly for conversation and school projects, with family members serving as their primary information source.
The third group, “News Is Not My Thing,” has a higher male response rate of about 61%, showing minimal interest in media, aside from sports and entertainment.
To stay informed, they access ‘YouTubers’ less frequently than the first group, sharing the opinion that news is boring, especially political content.
This group also uses media for conversation and schoolwork, but less than the second group, sourcing information from media outlets to a lesser degree than the previously defined groups.
The final category identified in the study is labeled “Old School Media Glimpse,” expressing interest in sports, entertainment, and some attention to technology.
This group is more diverse than groups one and two, yet broader in news engagement than group three, with 50.69% female responses and the rest male.
They believe “journalists are more prominent (compared to digital influencers, more prevalent in groups one and two),” and also share the view that news “has a negative impact” on their lives and moods, describing the media as “biased” like the other groups.
This group primarily accesses media for conversations and school assignments, with social media and family as their information sources.
The survey concluded that “emphasis on news was not evident within the groupings, focusing on individual interests rather than collective ones,” highlighting the crucial roles of school and family.
YouNDigital is a project developed by the Research Center at Lusófona University (CICANT) and is funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology.
