10 Insights From the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026
How do you consume news?
Earlier this week I came across the 2026 edition of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report. I confess I didn’t read every word of the 178-page report, but I skimmed through it and compiled a handful of insights that I thought may be worth noting, along with some limited commentary from me.
You can read the full report yourself here. But here are 10 insights I’ve mined out of it for you:
1. Social media and video networks have overtaken news websites for the first time. Averaged across 48 markets, social media and video networks are now the single most widely used way of accessing online news, used by 54% of respondents, ahead of news organizations’ own websites and apps at 51%. The report frames this as the central theme of the year: the “platformisation” of news consumption.
2. Trust in news has fallen to its lowest level ever recorded. Trust dropped in 29 of the 48 markets surveyed, bringing the global average down to 37%—the lowest since the Institute began measuring trust in 2015. It fell by 5 percentage points or more in 19 markets, and in the United States only 25% of people now say they trust the news most of the time.
3. AI chatbots are growing as a news source, but not explosively (yet). Weekly use of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini for news rose from 7% to 10% year-on-year. Usage skews young—16% of under-35s use them—and several major markets (the US, UK, France, Germany) saw no increase at all. Trust in AI chatbot answers sits at just 20% globally, well below trust in news overall (37%).
4. Online news video is now consumed by a majority in every market. For the first time, a majority watch online news video in all 48 markets, with 77% of people globally doing so each week. In 45 of those markets, more people now watch online news video than broadcast TV news—Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands are the only exceptions.
5. The video growth is going to third-party platforms, not publishers’ own sites. All of the growth in online video consumption is happening on third-party platforms. Mainstream news organizations have, on average, seen video consumption on their own sites and apps decline by five percentage points this year.
6. News creators and influencers are now a substantial part of the news diet. Around 27% of respondents globally get some news from individual creators or influencers, and 46% get news from creators of any type. People find creators more entertaining, easier to understand, and more relatable than traditional outlets, but rate them lower on trustworthiness and impartiality. Most appear to use creators alongside traditional media rather than instead of it.
7. Interest in news continues a steep, sustained decline. Since 2021, the share of people saying they are “extremely” or “very” interested in news has fallen by an average of 13 percentage points. A quarter (25%) are now casual or passive users who consume news roughly once a week, up from 16% in 2021.
8. Generational divides in news habits are pronounced and unlikely to close. More than half (52%) of 18–24-year-olds globally now name social media, video networks, or AI chatbots as their main source of news, while TV remains dominant for those 45 and over. The report finds little reason to expect young adults to “age into” older habits—56% of 18–24s who didn’t read a newspaper last week say they have never read one regularly.
9. “Google Zero” is a live threat to publisher referral traffic. Organic search traffic from Google to over 2,500 sites fell by about a third (33%) globally—and 38% in the US—between November 2024 and November 2025. Publishers expect search referral traffic to nearly halve (-43%) over the next three years, pushing many to abandon reach as a success metric in favor of deeper engagement with smaller, loyal audiences.
10. Support for impartiality endures even as satisfaction with coverage lags. Despite claims that impartiality is outdated, those who prefer news that doesn’t take sides outnumber those who prefer news matching their views by more than two to one (45% prefer impartial news). Yet audiences are dissatisfied with execution—globally, an 11-point net majority think the media does a bad job covering immigration specifically.
How we consume the news is rapidly evolving, and not in ways that indicate a move toward a deeper understanding of what is happening in the world. I am afraid there ought to be some cause for concern with regard to our news diet and consumption habits, especially among young people.
Here in America, there has long been some concern about the degree to which cable news has wormed into the minds of our older friends and family members. It appears that younger generations do not find themselves on any healthier of a news-diet trajectory, even if it is a bit different from their parents’ and grandparents’ way of consuming the news.
