Young Millennials are twice as likely to get news from social media | M&M Global

Young Millennials are twice as likely to get news from social media

Social media platforms are the go-to digital place for content discovery among young millennials, a new study commissioned by Buzzfeed and Mediavest | Spark has found.

mil

The survey, conducted by Forrester Consulting, questioned 1,500 digitally active 18-55 year olds, showed that social media is a top news provider from four key findings.

Firstly, the study showed that social media is becoming the dominant method of content discovery, with respondents preferring it for reading, viewing or listening to topics they care about and often passively seeing news shared in friend’s feeds.

Secondly, young millennials (18-24 year olds) are significantly more likely to discover news through social media than older groups, twice as likely as 35-55 year olds. In contrast, only one in ten young millennials prefer TV news shows.

Thirdly, young millennials are 65% more likely to ‘like’ a publisher’s post and 65% more likely to share than 35-55 year olds, with young millennials following an average of 121 publishers across social media platforms – about three times more than 25-55 year olds. 57% young millennials will follow their favourite publisher across platforms but 75% will unfollow publishers if they don’t like their content.

Last, the research showed that young millennials value shareworthy, easy to consumer and mobile-ready content, and are 60% more likely to prefer content that is interesting to share with friends. They also showed little patience for desktop content, spending 45% more time consuming content on their smartphones compared with 35-55 year olds.

“Social media is the dominant source for news discovery, particularly with Millennials, and the implications for brands are important,” commented Publicis Media global head of audience measurement Kate Sirkin. “Providing Millennials with engaging content as social currency in a mobile-first world is a powerful way to connect with these consumers.”

“The social newsfeed has become a highly personalized news curation vehicle, connecting with millennials in a way traditional media doesn’t,” added Buzzfeed research manager Lindsey Kaye,. “For brands, this means creating content that drives connections with the individual, their inner-circle and the sub-cultures where they play is key.”

Anna Dobbie

Reporter

No Comments Yet

Leave a Reply