Fewer people trust traditional media, more turn to TikTok for news: report

The number of people globally who initially access news through a website or app has dropped by 10 points since 2018, and younger groups prefer to access news through social media, search or mobile aggregators, according to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s annual Digital News Report released on Tuesday.

Audiences pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, the report added.

TikTok is the fastest-growing social network in the report, used by 20% of 18- to 24-year-olds for news, up five percentage points from last year. Fewer than half the survey respondents expressed much interest in news at all, down sharply from 6 out of 10 in 2017.