Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Welcome to the Deep Dive. Today, our mission is exploring the Gen Z shift. It's essentially a comprehensive guide to understanding, you know, everything about how Generation Z consumes information.

• Speaker #1

  It's such an important topic.

• Speaker #0

  It really is. And we're anchoring this Deep Dive in the writings of Benoit van Kauenberg. He's a European strategist, a leading expert on Generation Z, and the founder of 20-something. Right. And we are pairing his insights with this massive decade-long research initiative. That culminated in the March 2026 digital news report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

• Speaker #1

  And we really need to be clear right up front about why you, the listener, need to care about this.

• Speaker #0

  Absolutely.

• Speaker #1

  Because whether you're a manager trying to understand your younger employees or a marketer or honestly just someone trying to make sense of the modern world, understanding the shift is crucial.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, it applies to everyone.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. We aren't just talking about what apps kids are using to pass the time. We are looking at a fundamental rewiring of how an entire generation agrees on what is real, what's important, and how information actually moves through society.

• Speaker #0

  So to figure out where Gen Z is going, we first have to look at what they've, well, completely abandoned.

• Speaker #1

  The front door.

• Speaker #0

  The front door, exactly. The death of the traditional homepage. I mean, think back to 2015.

• Speaker #1

  Wow, a decade ago.

• Speaker #0

  Right. The digital playbook was so simple back then. You build a website, you launch an app. And boom, you're an online first publisher.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, that was the gold standard.

• Speaker #0

  And a decade ago, over a third of young people, 36% to be exact, went straight to a news site or an app as their main source of information.

• Speaker #1

  That's a huge chunk.

• Speaker #0

  But if we look at the 2026 data, that number has completely crashed to 24%. Wow. Yeah, social media has just utterly cannibalized that traffic, jumping up to become the primary gateway for 39% of that demographic.

• Speaker #1

  And, you know, that data point reveals a. profound psychological shift.

• Speaker #0

  How so?

• Speaker #1

  Well, we've moved from an online first mindset, which requires intent, to a social first reality, which is entirely passive.

• Speaker #0

  Okay, right.

• Speaker #1

  What we are seeing is the absolute dominance of what the Reuters research calls incidental consumption. Right now, only 14% of young people actually navigate directly to a news site.

• Speaker #0

  14%.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, compared to 28% of those over 55. So instead of going to the news, the news just sort of happens to them while they're scrolling.

• Speaker #0

  OK, let's unpack this because incidental consumption sounds, you know, a bit academic, but it represents a massive behavioral shift.

• Speaker #1

  It really does.

• Speaker #0

  The old way of getting informed was like driving to a specific grocery store, get in your car, you know you need milk and eggs, you walk down the aisles, pick out your items and leave. It's highly intentional.

• Speaker #1

  Right, you're hunting for it.

• Speaker #0

  Exactly. But the new Gen Z way is more like walking down a really crowded, chaotic city street. And having random people hand you bite-sized snacks as you walk by.

• Speaker #1

  I love that analogy.

• Speaker #0

  Thanks. You aren't hunting for the snacks. They just collide with you while you're doing other things.

• Speaker #1

  That collision is the whole point. But let's upgrade that metaphor just a little bit. Okay. Because social media feeds are anything but random. Unlike a typical city street, the people handing out those snacks in the digital feed already know your exact favorite flavor.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, right, the algorithm.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. The algorithm has studied you. So you never feel the need to drive to the grocery store again because the exact things you want to consume are already finding you.

• Speaker #0

  That makes total sense.

• Speaker #1

  And it happens constantly because this demographic lives in a state of total digital immersion. The report actually highlights that 60% of 18 to 24-year-olds feel they're always connected to the Internet.

• Speaker #0

  60%.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, compared to just 40% of the 55 plus crowd.

• Speaker #0

  You know, think about your own habits for a second, right? Think about how you probably pull out your phone and scroll while you're waiting in line for coffee or just sitting on the train.

• Speaker #1

  Guilty.

• Speaker #0

  Same. That is incidental consumption in action. When you're always connected, information is just the water you swim in. It's no longer an appointment you put on your calendar.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. But this raises a huge problem for the people actually making the news.

• Speaker #0

  Why is that?

• Speaker #1

  Well, because if the news is just something that collides with you in a social feed, the brand itself gets completely stripped away.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, right. Because if you're just scrolling and a video pops up, the prestige of the logo in the corner, whether it's like the New York Times or the BBC, it becomes almost invisible.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly.

• Speaker #0

  The thing that actually grabs your attention isn't the institution. It's the face of the person talking directly to the camera.

• Speaker #1

  It's a complete migration of trust. Essentially, they've stopped trusting the big shiny logo on the building and started trusting the person talking to them on the screen.

• Speaker #0

  From institutions to individuals?

• Speaker #1

  Right. The research refers to this as moving from institutional authority to parasocial authority.

• Speaker #0

  Parasocial authority. That is a fascinating term. I mean, it basically means building a one-sided psychological intimacy, right?

• Speaker #1

  That's right. When a creator is looking directly into their smartphone camera, maybe they're sitting in their somewhat messy bedroom and they're just speaking conversationally.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, it feels real.

• Speaker #1

  It does. It builds a level of intimacy and perceived authenticity that, frankly, a polished news anchor in a multimillion-dollar studio wearing a suit and reading off a teleprompter. Simply cannot replicate.

• Speaker #0

  And the data totally backs this up. 51% of 18 to 24-year-olds pay more attention to individual creators and personalities for their news.

• Speaker #1

  Wow. Over half?

• Speaker #0

  Over half. While only 39% prioritize traditional news brands. And what's wild is that the exact inverse is true for older generations. Older audiences still trust the logo.

• Speaker #1

  But younger audiences trust the person.

• Speaker #0

  Exactly. Can you give us some examples of who these people actually are?

• Speaker #1

  Absolutely. You look at ringers like Hugo Travers, who goes by Hugo de Crypte in France. Okay, yeah. Or Dylan Page, who's known as News Daddy on TikTok. Or there's this really fascinating Spanish outlet called Actuality. Yeah, it was founded by four young women, and they essentially act as translators.

• Speaker #0

  Translators. How do you mean?

• Speaker #1

  Well, they'll use a green screen effect on TikTok, put screenshots of complex legacy news articles behind them. And then just conversationalize it. They point to the test, break down the jargon, and explain what it actually means in plain language.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, that's brilliant.

• Speaker #1

  It is. And they have millions of followers doing this.

• Speaker #0

  And there's a specific reason why Gen Z wants these translators or decipherers, as Van Kouwenberg calls them. Right. It stems from what he terms a representation grievance.

• Speaker #1

  That is a crucial piece of the puzzle right there. Because this isn't just about Gen Z having a shorter attention span. Or preferring a casual tone.

• Speaker #0

  Right. It's deeper than that.

• Speaker #1

  Much deeper. There is a systemic feeling among young people that traditional media does not accurately or fairly represent them. For example, the data shows that only 39% of young women feel that traditional media covers their age group fairly.

• Speaker #0

  Only 39%.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. And when you feel chronically misunderstood or stereotyped or just flat out ignored by the institution, You naturally gravitate toward a creator. who looks, talks and thinks like you do.

• Speaker #0

  So what does this all mean? I have to push back here for a second just to play devil's advocate. If young people are getting their worldviews from influencers on TikTok rather than edited, rigorously fact-checked journalistic institutions, aren't they just trading factual rigor for personality? I mean, isn't it incredibly dangerous to swap out journalists for people who just give off good vibes?

• Speaker #1

  What's fascinating here is that This is the number one concern raised by the traditional news industry.

• Speaker #0

  Right. I'd imagine so.

• Speaker #1

  But if we look closely at the mechanics of what these specific, highly successful creators are doing, they aren't necessarily replacing facts with fiction. They are replacing the filter.

• Speaker #0

  The filter.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. Many of these decipherers are actually heavily researching their content. They're reading those very mainstream news articles that young people are ignoring.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, so they're using a legacy media as their source material.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. What they're doing is taking those verified facts. and translating them into a format that resonates. To a generation that feels overlooked by legacy media, these creators are trading the illusion of total, sterile objectivity for the radical transparency of a known personality.

• Speaker #0

  Right. You know exactly who is talking to you, what their biases might be, and why they care.

• Speaker #1

  Precisely.

• Speaker #0

  But wait, if they're trusting personalities because of a representation grievance, that totally breaks a golden rule of journalism, right?

• Speaker #1

  How do you mean?

• Speaker #0

  Well, traditional news dictates that a reporter must be completely neutral. You present both sides, you keep your feelings out of it, and you let the viewer decide.

• Speaker #1

  And that brings us right to the impartiality mismatch. Older audiences still generally want just the facts. They want that strict neutrality. But Gen Z views the world entirely differently. 32% of 18 to 24-year-olds believe that being neutral makes no sense on certain sensitive issues.

• Speaker #0

  32%.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, and that is almost double the rate of the 55-plus crowd.

• Speaker #0

  Now, just to be clear for everyone listening, our goal here is to impartially report on what these sources are telling us. We aren't taking a stance on whether Gen Z is right or wrong about this.

• Speaker #1

  Absolutely not. We're just looking at the data.

• Speaker #0

  Right. But we have to understand the mechanics of their mindset to see why this shift is happening. So what kind of issues are they saying neutrality makes no sense on?

• Speaker #1

  The research specifically points to existential and human rights topics like racism or climate change.

• Speaker #0

  OK, yeah.

• Speaker #1

  There's actually a quote from a study participant in the Reuters research that really illuminates the mechanism at play here. They said, I feel like it's kind of difficult to be impartial when it comes to the racism discussion.

• Speaker #0

  That makes a lot of sense from their perspective.

• Speaker #1

  Right. For a significant portion of Gen Z, both sides-ism on certain topics doesn't feel like objective reporting. It feels like a moral abdication.

• Speaker #0

  Wow.

• Speaker #1

  They view traditional neutrality as a stance that actually ignores. objective reality just to protect the status quo.

• Speaker #0

  And because of that, they are fundamentally redefining what the word news actually means.

• Speaker #1

  Yes, they are.

• Speaker #0

  Because a traditional editor might think of news strictly as, you know, politics, economics, foreign affairs. And young people do still care about local and international events. But when asked what they are most interested in, they consistently rank things like fun news, mental health and science higher than politics.

• Speaker #1

  Which perfectly explains the rising phenomenon of news avoidance.

• Speaker #0

  Right.

• Speaker #1

  42% of young people say they actively avoid the news.

• Speaker #0

  Now, I know older generations also avoid the news, right? Doomscrolling is kind of a universal experience now. And the number one reason across all age groups is just that the news is depressing.

• Speaker #1

  That's true. It is. But here is where the mechanics of news avoidance diverge based on age.

• Speaker #0

  Okay.

• Speaker #1

  21% of young news avoiders say they avoid it because it just doesn't seem relevant to their lives.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  But even more telling, 15 percent say they avoid it because it is simply too hard to follow or understand.

• Speaker #0

  Really?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. That is triple the rate of older adults who find news too complex.

• Speaker #0

  And, you know, when you think about it, that makes total sense.

• Speaker #1

  It does.

• Speaker #0

  If you're 20 years old today and you try to read a standard legacy article about a geopolitical conflict in the Middle East that's been going on for four decades. The article generally assumes you know the backstory.

• Speaker #1

  Right. They jump right in.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. It reports on the latest treaty without explaining the 50 years of context. It's like walking into a movie theater during the third act, sitting down and trying to figure out who the villain is, why everyone is crying, and what the plot is.

• Speaker #1

  It's exhausting.

• Speaker #0

  It is exhausting.

• Speaker #1

  The context deficit is massive. Yeah. So if traditional news is too hard to follow, irrelevant, or lacks the necessary backstory, How do they bridge that knowledge gap? I mean, they aren't going to the library to read up on the history.

• Speaker #0

  Here's where it gets really interesting.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  They are turning to artificial intelligence.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, wow.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. There is a staggering usage gap here that completely flips our assumptions about AI. 15% of 18 to 24-year-olds are using AI for news on a weekly basis.

• Speaker #1

  Weekly?

• Speaker #0

  Yes. Compare that to a mere 3% of those aged 55 and older.

• Speaker #1

  Wait, wait. I have to challenge this because this feels completely counterintuitive.

• Speaker #0

  Right.

• Speaker #1

  I mean, generative AI is notorious for hallucinating facts. It makes things up. We've all seen the viral deepfakes like the Pope in that giant white puffer jacket.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, that was wild.

• Speaker #1

  Older generations look at AI as this massive threat that's going to destroy truth. How can a generation that is supposedly obsessed with authenticity and transparency trust a robot to explain a 20-year geopolitical conflict?

• Speaker #0

  It's a great question. And it's because they aren't using AI to break the news. They are using it to decode the news. It's a completely different mechanism of interaction. Among the young people who use AI for news, 48% say they are using it specifically to make stories easier to understand.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, so they're acting as their own editors.

• Speaker #0

  Exactly. They will take a dense 5,000-word article from a legacy publisher, drop it into a chatbot, and prompt it to explain this to me like I'm a beginner. They are using AI to generate the missing... context that traditional journalism left out.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, wow. So it literally is a decoder ring. Yeah. And they're also using it for format shifting, right?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, exactly. They'll take that same long text article and have an AI converted into like a three minute conversational audio summary that they can listen to while walking across campus.

• Speaker #1

  That's incredibly savvy.

• Speaker #0

  It is. And surprisingly, they use it for verification.

• Speaker #1

  Really?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. In a social feed saturated with conflicting hot takes, they will use AI chat. to quickly cross-reference facts and find the baseline truth. Their comfort level with this technology is just much higher.

• Speaker #1

  The numbers support that.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, 30% of young people say they are comfortable with news made mostly by AI compared to just 13% of older adults.

• Speaker #1

  And savvy publishers are actually catching on to this behavior, aren't they?

• Speaker #0

  They are. You look at the public service broadcaster NRK in Norway or the tabloid Aftonbladet in Sweden. They've introduced AI-generated... bullet point summaries right at the top of their articles.

• Speaker #1

  So they're doing the decoding work for the reader.

• Speaker #0

  Exactly. And they are seeing tremendous success with young readers who just want the bottom line quickly and clearly.

• Speaker #1

  Because at the end of the day, Gen Z just wants the information to be easily decoded and translated, which explains exactly why they're completely abandoning text in favor of video and audio.

• Speaker #0

  Yes. The medium is no longer the message. The video. is the message.

• Speaker #1

  Let's look at the absolute collapse of Facebook for a second.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, man.

• Speaker #1

  For a long time, Facebook was the digital town square. It was where everyone went to share articles.

• Speaker #0

  Right.

• Speaker #1

  But since 2014, Facebook has suffered a 37 percentage point drop as a news source for youth.

• Speaker #0

  37 points.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. To them, it's essentially an artifact. The primary theaters for news now are Instagram, YouTube and the absolute behemoth

• Speaker #0

  TikTok. TikTok is everywhere.

• Speaker #1

  Globally. 47% of youth use TikTok every single week.

• Speaker #0

  And we need to understand how they're using it, right? Because they aren't just watching dance prints anymore.

• Speaker #1

  Right.

• Speaker #0

  73% of 18 to 24-year-olds watch short-form news videos weekly.

• Speaker #1

  That's massive.

• Speaker #0

  And TikTok's user interface, the full-screen vertical video, the immediate algorithmic swipe, it is the exact opposite of a traditional homepage.

• Speaker #1

  Right. There's no front door.

• Speaker #0

  Right. It doesn't ask you to choose a category like world news or business. It just delivers a continuous audio visual stream of information.

• Speaker #1

  This is a total audio visual takeover of the information space. And legacy brands are scrambling because they finally see the writing on the wall.

• Speaker #0

  They absolutely are trying to adapt. Venerable text heavy institutions like The New York Times, The Economist and CNN. have all launched dedicated watch tabs within their mobile apps.

• Speaker #1

  Interesting.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, they're trying to pull that vertical video TikTok-style experience into their own walled gardens.

• Speaker #1

  Makes sense.

• Speaker #0

  And in Singapore, Channel News Asia launched a feature called Fast, which provides bite-sized AI-generated news summaries that you literally navigate with a TikTok-style vertical swipe.

• Speaker #1

  It's all about matching the delivery mechanism that Gen Z has already decided is the standard. If you want to reach them, you can't make them read a wall of text.

• Speaker #0

  Exactly. And then you have digital-born startups that never even bothered with text.

• Speaker #1

  Right, like the Daily Aureus in Australia.

• Speaker #0

  Yes.

• Speaker #1

  They built their entire brand from day one as a social-first, jargon-free news outlet, specifically designed for young people. They operate almost entirely in the Instagram and TikTok feeds.

• Speaker #0

  They don't wait for you to come to a homepage.

• Speaker #1

  No, they bring the news directly to your scroll.

• Speaker #0

  Now, I get the video aspect. That makes perfect sense for when they're looking at their screens. But what about when their screens are off? Because if I walk through a college campus today, Every single person I see is walking around with AirPods in.

• Speaker #1

  Audio is the other half of this takeover.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Podcasts are massive with this demographic. Fifty nine percent of young people listen to podcasts monthly.

• Speaker #0

  Wow.

• Speaker #1

  But there is a very important catch in how they define what they're actually listening to.

• Speaker #0

  Right. Because if you ask an older person what a news podcast is, they will describe something very specific. They'll say it's the audio version of a newspaper, like 20 minutes. Highly produced, strictly factual, maybe a dispatch from a war zone?

• Speaker #1

  But Gen Z's definition is much blurrier.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, so?

• Speaker #1

  Well, they might listen to a three-hour unedited chat or a comedy podcast where current events, politics, and culture are heavily debated. Think of something like a really popular interview show.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, sure. Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  They are absorbing massive amounts of information and shaping their worldviews based on these conversations. But if you ask them on a survey if they consume news podcasts, they might say no.

• Speaker #0

  Ah, because to them it's not news.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly. To them, it isn't news. It's just a conversation. It seamlessly blends entertainment, lifestyle and information into one continuous audio experience.

• Speaker #0

  OK, so let's pull all these threads together because we've covered a massive amount of ground today.

• Speaker #1

  We really have.

• Speaker #0

  What we're seeing in the Reuters data and Benoit van Kallenberg's analysis is not a generation that's apathetic.

• Speaker #1

  No, not at all.

• Speaker #0

  They aren't disengaged. They're just operating under a completely new, fundamentally different social contract for how information should work.

• Speaker #1

  Perfectly said.

• Speaker #0

  They have traded the destination homepage for the algorithmic social stream. They've traded the faceless institutional logo for the relatable parasocial creator.

• Speaker #1

  Yes.

• Speaker #0

  They've traded strict both sides neutrality for what they perceive as moral authenticity. And they are aggressively trading the written word for AI-assisted video and audio.

• Speaker #1

  And this brings us right back to why this deep dive is so critical for you, the listener.

• Speaker #0

  Right.

• Speaker #1

  If you want to connect with the next generation, whether you're selling a product, teaching a university class, running a political campaign, or reporting the news, you cannot force them back to the old front door.

• Speaker #0

  You have to meet them out in the stream.

• Speaker #1

  You have to. You have to speak their language, use their formats, and most importantly, respect their deep desire for context, translation, and authenticity.

• Speaker #0

  Going back to our earlier metaphor, you have to hand them the snacks on the street, and you have to make sure it's the flavor they actually want.

• Speaker #1

  You do, but... This raises a profound structural question, and it's one we should all be thinking about long after this deep dive ends.

• Speaker #0

  Okay, lay it on us.

• Speaker #1

  If we connect this to the bigger picture, as Gen Z fully embraces these highly personalized algorithm-driven feeds, and as they rely on AI to translate and summarize the world for them, and as they retreat into individual creator niches that perfectly align with their own views and values, what happens to our shared? basic understanding of the world.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, wow. Yeah, that is the million dollar question.

• Speaker #1

  Because if everyone is walking down the street looking at their own screen, experiencing their own custom-tailored reality built by an algorithm, how do we maintain the shared civic discourse that is absolutely required for a functioning democracy?

• Speaker #0

  It's a heavy thought. If there is no front door, and if there's no shared building we all walk into together to read the same newspaper, how do we even agree on what house we're living in?

• Speaker #1

  Exactly.

• Speaker #0

  Something to mull over next time you find yourself endlessly swiping through your own perfectly tailored feed.