Ask a group of teenagers what’s going on in the news this week, and you’ll get a surprisingly different variety of answers.
One will have seen the newest political controversy sandwiched between a vacation post and makeup tutorial on Instagram. Another heard about a Supreme Court decision by word of mouth from their friends at school. A third saw a creator’s response– or stitched video –to a breaking headline in a TikTok, but only listened for the funny commentary.
These young people aren’t necessarily uninformed. But they also aren’t consuming information the same way as previous generations.
As young people find themselves immersed in influences like social media, short form content, and online creators, journalists are confronted with a paradox: teens are seemingly surrounded by the news, yet somehow feel distinctly disconnected from it at the same time.
This phenomenon is often categorized as news apathy, or a state of detachment and indifference toward current events and journalism. But this term broadly labels young people’s complicated sentiment towards news as general disinterest, when the truth may be more nuanced.
Whether they want to or not, many teens encounter the news everyday. A national study from the Media Insight Project in April 2026 found that 57% of teenagers aged 13-17 encountered news at least once a day on social media. Additionally, 81% reported getting news or information on current events from influencers or creators at least sometimes.
If teens encounter news so frequently, why are they still so often thought of as apathetic towards it? A few potential causes exist to explain that label.
First, news can often be exhausting, especially when it seems overwhelming or negative. The Reuters Institute found that 40% of people report sometimes or often avoiding the news, with younger people more likely to cite causes like irrelevance, a sense of powerlessness and difficulty understanding.
When teenagers are exposed to an onslaught of news, often without actively seeking it out themselves, it’s easy to feel bombarded and overwhelmed. And as social media algorithms promote content with more engagement, it’s often videos that are shocking, explicit, or distressing that gain traction online, which creates an intense and negative stream of content.
Contrastingly, when people actively seek out news themselves, they search for topics they find relevant and interesting. When social media removes that proactive decision and replaces it with click-based recommendations, it can create negative associations with news that is difficult to reverse.
A greater volume of neutral or positive news content could also improve the exhaustive nature of news. For example, solutions journalism refers to the genre of reporting that covers not only a disaster or issue, but also highlights the way that problem is being solved. When so many young people cite feeling helpless as a cause of news avoidance, intentional solutions-based stories are vital in making news consumption a more positive experience.
Another cause of the news apathy label is perceived irrelevance. In the same Reuters Institute study, irrelevance was one of the major cited causes for news avoidance. When people are often consumed by their personal lives, headlines about topics like policy and tariffs may seem abstract. Some of that disconnect can even be attributed to age– how much can teenagers resonate with stories about taxes that they don’t pay, or elections that they can’t vote in?
This is especially true when youth voices are so often underrepresented in the media. Studies consistently show that young people are heavily underrepresented and even stereotyped in mainstream news. Even when young people’s voices are featured, it is often to fuel adult-driven agendas or perpetuate negative tropes.
News could resonate more with young people if they felt that it affected them, their community, or someone they know. Alternatively, if media featured youth voices more authentically, or was even created by young journalists, it could make news feel less abstract and more personal.
Finally, teens are often labeled as news apathetic because of a difficulty to trust the news they encounter. The existence of disinformation, bias, and unreliable content online is taught, but can often leave teens feeling wary and detached rather than educated and informed. When the Internet is often the most accessible source of information, but simultaneously taught to be the most unreliable, it can eliminate the most obtainable news source for many young people.
Social media only inflates this issue. The dangers of social media in many ways represent the epitome of online threats. When creator commentary is often layered on top of headlines for greater entertainment value, it only introduces another layer of potential bias and misinformation.
Young people especially should be taught not just the dangers of the Internet, but also the solutions that exist alongside it. When teens are taught who to trust, not just who not to trust, news becomes more approachable. In the stage between experiencing curiosity about a topic and actually consuming that information, the barrier of determining who to trust or where to find that information can make all the difference.
In an increasingly digital world, young people experience the news landscape in a distinctly different way than generations before them. But being quick to label their feelings towards it as apathetic isn’t the most accurate answer.
Instead, it’s important to recognize and understand the barriers that exist between young people and the news they’re seeking out. Labelling those challenges as disinterest places young people under a convenient adolescent trope without creating space to improve the issue or change the narrative.
