Finding 2
Young people and adults exist in information siloes and, as a result, informational asymmetry is a pressing issue in this space.
Summary:
There are significant differences in the sources that young people and adults (school staff and parents) use to receive news and search for information, and therefore differences in the sources that inform their world views.
Young people tend to get their news from less traditional channels, such as the social media platform TikTok, in comparison to adults.
Our polling found that 77% of 11-12-year-olds use social media, despite the age limits on most social media platforms being 13.
Information accessed on social media does appear to be influencing young people’s world views.
The appeal of social media’s accessibility and immediacy may play a critical role in how it is used.
There are significant differences between the sources used by young people and those used by adults (school staff and parents) to receive news or search for information. These sources help inform and shape their world views.
11-18-year-olds tend to get their news from less formal channels. In our poll, the two most popular choices were ‘word of mouth from family or friends’ (41%) and ‘social media ‘(38%). Only 26% of pupils got their news from a TV broadcaster. By comparison, school staff (51%) and parents (65%) were much more likely to get their news ‘from a national TV news broadcast’ (e.g. BBC, ITV, Sky) than pupils.
A similar proportion of school staff use social media for news in some way (38%), staff tended to report more sources of news in general than students. The youngest students (11-12-year-olds) tend to rely more on their school (47%), word of mouth (42%) and the internet in general (23%) for news. Among older students, social media plays a much larger role, far and away the main sources of news for 17-18-year-olds (50%), ahead of word of mouth (37%). The results indicate the gaps between the sources of information which staff and students have; as students engage more with the news, they do so through social media, whereas staff often do so through traditional media.
A key driver of this appeared to be the ease of use of smartphones and the accessibility of information. According to pupils, the top two advantages social media has over other sources of news are the speed at which it provides information (35%) and the ease of use of device (34%). This undoubtedly has some positive implications in terms of how easily young people can now access the information they are interested in, however it also carries with it risks, and the need for young people to be able to interact safely with the sites they are using to receive information.
While this preference for social media is true of the 11-18 population as a whole, social media as a source of news is considerably more common among older students. 50% of 17-18-year-olds say that social media is a source of news, versus only 22% of 11–12 year-olds. There is also a gendered dimension to social media usage, where girls are slightly more likely to get their news from social media than boys (41% vs 35%) and from celebrities and social media influencers (15% vs 10%).
Polling for the Commission found that 77% of 11–12-year-olds use social media, despite the age limits on most social media platforms being 13. This reinforces wider research demonstrating that young people below the age of 13 are accessing and using social media for information.1
Information accessed on social media appears to be influencing young people’s world views. 36% of young people said they have changed their opinions or beliefs about a mainstream news story based on information they find on social media, rising to 44% for those aged 17-18 years old. However, an almost equal number have done the reverse, with 39% claiming they have changed their views on a social media story because of mainstream news sources. This suggests that young people are not solely informed by social media, and there is an awareness amongst some young people of the need for multiple information sources.
The appeal of social media’s accessibility and immediacy may play a critical role in how it is used. Some 52% of respondents have used social media to get more detail about a story they have first heard about through a mainstream source, rising to 64% for 17-18-year-olds. This suggests that even where mainstream news sources are providing information, they are not providing enough or the right type of information to satisfy young people’s needs. Young people are turning to social media to fill this gap.
However, there were problems identified with using social media – namely the lack of grounding context, the displaying of content to users without a sufficient knowledge base to understand it, and the tendency of platforms to serve up more of content users have previously viewed or interacted with. This was noted by Chris Martin, CEO of The Mix, during the Commission Evidence Sessions:
There's a difference between a TikTok and a 1000-word article that we might write on something. [The video] is very quick and it's totally without context - it’s just something that’s served up to you, with nothing around it. We also know there's an algorithmic problem that basically once you start going down one particular rabbit hole, you will continue down it…
Chris Martin, CEO, The Mix, Commission Evidence Session
Where school staff and adults were using social media, they were predominantly using different social media sites to young people. School staff are effectively siloed away on different apps – when school staff use Facebook or Twitter/X, they’re effectively inhabiting a different online world to their pupils on TikTok.
“If I saw something on TikTok…Teachers probably wouldn’t know what it is.”
“…and you say [to pupils], well, “did you watch the news? “Nah I’ve just seen it online.”
As a result of adults and young people using different information sources more broadly and using different social media sites, there is a vast difference in the information that these groups are consuming. These ‘information siloes’ expose young people to notably different content and specifically, to a different range of conspiracy theories than adults.
This different exposure to conspiracy theories can be seen in our data. When asked to identify specific conspiracy theories they had encountered, pupils, parents and school staff identified different claims. Adults (parents and school staff) were considerably more likely to be familiar with conspiracy theories such as those around Princess Diana or Covid-19. Pupils, on the other hand, were more likely to have encountered theories such as the moon landing and flat earth conspiracy theories.