Overview

• More than half of Americans aged 18–24 (54%) and those 25–34 (50%) identify social and video platforms as their main news source, outpacing television and online news sites among younger users.
• Prominent online personalities such as Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson reached roughly one-fifth and 14% of respondents respectively in the week after the presidential inauguration, illustrating influencers’ growing news role.
• Populist politicians increasingly bypass traditional outlets by engaging directly with partisan influencers and social channels that rarely offer rigorous journalistic scrutiny.
• Seventy-three percent of Americans report difficulty distinguishing true from false information online, and global surveys place influencers among the leading sources of misinformation.
• A growing minority of news consumers rely on AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini for weekly updates—15% of under-25s and 7% of all respondents—raising questions about traffic loss for publishers.