Is social media really to blame? Young adults primary news source and their political and civic engagement

Social scientists find that many young adults get their news and political information from algorithmically curated platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Despite this important insight, scholars often fail to distinguish between young adults who turn to algorithmically curated news or directly sourced news (like legacy news publications) when evaluating their political and civic participation. We obtained a nationally representative sample of 1,000 U.S. residents ages 18 to 29 and examined their preferred news medium and their past – and intended future – political and civic engagement. Using a series of ANCOVAs, we explore the effect of primary news media (e.g., directly sourced vs algorithmically driven) on both past political and civic engagement and intended future engagement. We found a significant relationship between primary news medium and political and civic engagement, such that individuals who indicated getting their news primarily from directly sourced news sources (on or offline), as opposed to social media, reported engaging in more political and civic acts in the past and intending to engage in more these behaviors in the future. These findings suggest that the source of news is related to young adults’ past engagement and intentions for future engagement when examined with a nuanced conceptualization of media.