The way Australians consume news has been changing for the past 30 years, ever since internet use became widespread.
Long gone are the days when families routinely shared bits of the newspaper over breakfast, or crowded around the 6 o’clock television news at night.
Since 2017, we have been tracking young people’s media engagement, to understand how they get their news.
This time, we found some young people are bypassing traditional outlets, reducing their use of social media sources and getting their news from artificial intelligence (AI) summaries using platforms such as Google search and tools like ChatGPT.
Are young people interested in the news?
Every three years, we ask at least 1,000 children and teens to complete our online survey. We use quotas for age, location, gender and parental education level to ensure respondents reflect the diversity of today’s young Australians.
Our 2026 survey results show a significant shift in young people’s news engagement, with an overall decline for young people aged 10–16 years*.
Across nearly every indicator, young people are less engaged with news than they were in our previous survey in 2023.
Young people who report following up on news after hearing about something happening in the world fell from 70% to 59%. Those following social media accounts for news fell from 41% to 29%. Checking news websites or apps is down from 38% to 33%.
Where do young people get their news?
Across the four surveys since 2017, family has always been the most common and trusted source of news for both children and teenagers.
But as children move into their teenage years, they also turn to other sources.
Social media has become a common source of news for young people since our first survey, rising from 53% in 2017 to 61% in 2020, during the early days of the pandemic.
But this trend has since reversed, falling to 41% in 2026. The latest decline is likely to be linked in part to the social media ban. This became law in December 2025, two months before our survey was in the field.
AI as a news source is new
In the latest survey, for the first time we asked young people about their use of AI to get news.
Already, 28% of children aged 10–12 report they are using an AI tool to ask about news often or sometimes, rising to 41% among teens aged 13–17.
This could be via AI summaries of the news (which are hard to avoid on Google) or by asking AI tools a question. For example, by typing in “what happened in Nepal?”.
This makes Al tools the second most common way young people proactively seek out news. It is also level with news websites or apps and ahead of social media, TV and radio.
This widespread use of AI to get news raises questions about whether young people are being prepared in school for this kind of news engagement, particularly when we know AI can sometimes be wrong or biased.
What’s happening in schools?
Encouragingly, more than half (61%) of young people discussed a news story in school in the past year often or sometimes. However, only around a quarter (26%) learned how to write or produce their own news stories.
Through the process of making their own news stories, students can learn about key elements of high-quality news: fact-checking, fair representation and the right of reply.
Students can also learn how the news can intersect with their own interests and how they can have a voice in their communities.
Decades of research tells us news engagement and civic engagement are closely entwined: when people feel informed about social issues and events, they are more likely to respond and take action.
Our survey findings reflect this. For example, 80% of young people who are highly engaged with news report working with others to address local problems, compared with only 43% of those who have low engagement with news. They are also much more likely to become involved in a cause and volunteer.
Why this matters
Children and young people have as much right to be informed about their communities and societies as anyone else. It’s also important for our democracy that young people’s voices are heard by adults on the issues that impact them.
To address this, families can support discussion of news in the home, and news providers can increase the representation of young people in the news.
Meanwhile, schools can draw attention to the importance of news and provide opportunities for young people to engage with and produce their own news. Schools can also support discussions about the benefits and risks around different forms of news, including news that is generated by AI.
*Previous surveys included young people aged 8–16 while the 2026 survey includes those aged 10–17. When comparing results across surveys we only include those aged 10–16. In all other cases we included data for those aged 10–17.
Sora Park and Simon Chambers were coauthors of the report mentioned in this article.
Tanya Notley currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council, ABC Education and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts. She is a member of the Australian Media Literacy Alliance.
Jee Young Lee receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Creative Australia, and the Department of Infrastructure, Transportation, Regional Development, Communications, Sport & the Arts.
Michael Dezuanni currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council, ABC Education and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts. He is chair of the Australian Media Literacy Alliance.
