Are Millennials unaware of current events?

Originally published by Douglas Keene.

The popular perception is that Millennials are passive and uninterested in civic issues and that they do not pay attention to traditional “news” since they are glued to their smartphones. According to a very recent survey, these beliefs, like many stereotypes, are simply wrong. The Media Insight Project recently published a survey of 1,046 adults aged 18-34 years (did you realize some Millennials were that old?). The findings show that Millennials actually keep up with traditional “news” stories as well as stories connecting them to friends, hobbies, culture and entertainment. The authors say that the “first digital generation is highly engaged” and that “if anything, the enormous role of social media appears to have a widening impact, not a narrowing one, on the awareness of this generation”.

Here are just a few of the results from their survey:

Contrary to popular belief, Millennials do not see themselves as “constantly connected”. While more than 90% of them owned smartphones and half had tablets, only 51% said they were online “most or all” of the day.

Social media involvement did not narrow their perspectives. Social media network feeds exposed them to a “diverse mix of viewpoints” some similar and some dissimilar to their own, according to 70% of those surveyed.

Of interest to the trial attorney is that 73% of those exposed to different views said they investigated the differing options of others at least sometimes with a quarter saying they investigate “always or often”. (This might indicate Millennials are more willing to consider viewpoints or evidence at odds with what they currently believe.)

69% of the Millennials said they get news at least once a day and 40% got news several times a day. This does not mean they watch a television news program or visit news sites to find news. More typically, news comes to them through social contexts (social networks or friends) and then they do research to learn more about the information.

Facebook use is pretty universal although younger Millennials are expressing growing frustration with Facebook and are more likely than older Millennials to have cut back on Facebook use or even dropped it entirely.

There are news-gathering differences by age within the Millennial generation. Younger Millennials (those under age 25 and even those out of college) use social networks more to identify news stories of interest to them and they use alternative news sites more. Older Millennials see social networks as “social” rather than sources for gathering information about the world around them.

This is a good resource to challenge your stereotypes about this particular group. They (in life, and as jurors) are not all the same. There are differences within this generation by age and by gender and even by ethnicity that may be surprising to you. Millennials are maturing and changing and popular beliefs about them are often seriously in error. And the Millennial may be more open to evidence contradicting their current point of view than are older jurors. That alone may make you want to look a little more closely at the Millennial in the box.

The Media Insight Project. 2015. How Millennials get news: Inside the habits of America’s first digital generation.

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Related posts:

1. The Millennials are growing up! Here’s what they think now…
2. Generation Y (aka the Millennials): Just the facts
3. The Millennials (aka ‘Gen Y’): On tattoos, TMI, tolerance and technology

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