The days of picking up the Sunday paper at a neighborhood newsstand, or even gathering around the television to catch the evening news, are fast disappearing. Young Americans are increasingly relying on social media platforms, where news influencers—not traditional legacy outlets—often hold sway over their news and information diets.
Nearly 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds, a cohort raised online, regularly consume information from news influencers—a higher share than any other age group. Teenagers ages 13 to 17 are even more engaged, with 81 percent saying they stay informed through influencers.
The Pew Research Center defines news influencers as individuals “who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers” on Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, or YouTube. They’re also known for their sometimes strained relationships with legacy media outlets, as well as their humorous, opinionated, and personality-based content, which tends to lean more on personal branding than journalistic credentials—all of which appeal to younger audiences.
Creators like Carlos Eduardo Espina and V Spehar provide quality news in ways that connect with young people, reaching individuals who may engage less with traditional media sources. Espina has amassed more than 15 million followers with his Spanish-language posts geared toward Latinos, while Spehar has garnered nearly five million followers across platforms with their easily digestible recaps of recent national political and cultural events. Other influencers like podcaster Joe Rogan and independent journalist James Li take more controversial positions on some of the major issues of the day.
But even the most committed social media journalists are not immune to the constraints of video sharing on online platforms, which prioritize punchy hooks, short clips, and high engagement. For Riley Sharon, a senior at DePaul University in Chicago, the innate pressures of short-form content make it difficult for news influencers to create quality journalism, and for viewers to properly process it.
“When you think about how a lot of information is conveyed to people—a lot of it in short-form content—it’s very flashy, it’s very kind of ‘keys jingling in your face,’” Sharon says. “It almost shuts off the opportunity to really digest and think about it on your own.” In a news model where a poster’s personality is more important than the quality of their reporting, the question becomes “basically how attractive can you be to a viewer … how can you sell yourself more than you’re selling the actual content you’re making,” Sharon says.
The presence of a clear personality and perspective may be a core reason for Gen Z’s affinity for news influencers. “Gen Z gravitates toward social media and news influencers because it feels more personal and easier to understand,” says Sydney Chan, a senior at Syracuse University, where she studies broadcast and digital journalism. “Traditional news can sometimes come off as distant or overly formal, while influencers feel more like people explaining what’s going on in a way that may be more relatable and digestible.”
Legacy news outlets have taken note, responding to Gen Z’s changing news consumption habits with social media and video content of their own. Late last year, the American Press Institute published a “guide to influencer collaborations,” while The New York Times launched a TikTok-style “Watch” tab which features short, informal clips describing recent events, or showing a reporter explaining their latest story. The Washington Post was a notable new-media early adopter, when journalist Dave Jorgenson famously launched its TikTok, and later The Washington Post Universe, in 2019. The Post’s TikTok has amassed almost two million followers.
According to Hanaa’ Tameez, a staff writer at Harvard University’s Nieman Lab, which studies changes in the news industry, news influencers have spurred a redefinition of “who is and isn’t a journalist and what qualifies as journalism.” “News publishers are becoming more adept at providing journalism in different formats and different mediums that serve different audiences,” Tameez says, adding, “The gap between when a trend catches on and becomes popular versus when a news publisher starts doing it … is over time getting smaller.”
For 27-year-old influencer Aidan Walker—whose content about internet culture and current events has earned him almost 200,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, as well as appearances at VidCon, a content creator industry conference, and on The Atlantic’s Galaxy Brain podcast with Charlie Warzel—these developments serve a need, imperfect as they are.
“At this point, more and more, the best thing they have are these TikTokers who are just random dudes in their twenties. They’re trying their best, [but] there’s just such little out there for people, and they turn to social media because they can’t find [anything else],” Walker says. “Young people are so interested in the world, and they want to learn more about it, and they want to think critically about their place in it, but who’s going to give that to them?”
