In a recently released report, In Changing News Landscape, Even Television is Vulnerable: Trends in News Consumption: 1991-2012, the Pew Research Center examines how news consumption has changed in the past twenty years. The report notes that television, which had maintained an audience as newspapers saw a decline in readers, is at risk of losing the next generation of viewers.
The report also details the rise in online news consumption, with an emphasis on the rise of the use of mobile devices to consume news and social networks as a discovery point for news.
According to the report, “[T]he percentage who regularly get news on a cell phone, tablet or other mobile device has nearly doubled since 2010, from 9% to 15%, and the number regularly seeing news on social network sites has almost tripled, from 7% to 20%.” The increase in mobile usage is attributed to the greater number of people who now have access the internet on their mobile device, which is 55% of the general public in 2012 compared to 31% two years ago.
Pew notes that age and education are a major factor with online and mobile news consumption. “Nearly two-thirds of college graduates (65%) regularly get news online, compared with just 28% of those with no more than a high school education.
Only about one-in-five (22%) of those 65 and older get online news regularly, by far the lowest percentage of any age group.”
The Pew Research Center has made the full report on which details the trends in news consumption over the past twenty years available online.