For decades, the evening news meant sitting in front of a TV. In 2026, that picture finally stopped matching reality. The Reuters Institute’s latest Digital News Report, covering 48 markets, found that social media and video platforms are now the world’s most widely used source of news at 54%, ahead of TV at 52% and news websites and apps at 51%. Since 2020, TV news use has fallen by 13 percentage points, while publishers’ own websites and apps have dropped by 12. (reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk)
The biggest engine behind this change is video. Reuters says 77% of people now watch online news video each week, and online video has overtaken broadcast TV news in 45 of the 48 markets in the study. YouTube remains the biggest video-led network for news, while Instagram and TikTok continue to gain ground. News, in other words, no longer waits for us at a fixed hour. It appears between short videos, entertainment clips, and updates from friends. (reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk)
Young people are leading the shift. Globally, more than half of 18-to-24-year-olds say social media, video networks, and AI chatbots are their main way of getting news, while TV is still the main source for people aged 45 and over. The United States shows the same pattern clearly: in the Reuters Institute’s 2025 report, 54% of Americans used social media and video networks for news, compared with 50% for TV and 48% for news websites and apps. Pew also found that 86% of U.S. adults get news from digital devices at least sometimes, and 53% get news from social media at least sometimes. (reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk)
But this new victory for social media comes with a warning. Reuters reports that global trust in news has fallen to 37%, concern about misinformation has risen to 62%, and only 3% of people rely only on news creators, even though 27% get some news from them. So TV has not simply been replaced by something better. Instead, we have entered a faster, more personal, and often more confusing news age. The real challenge now is not finding the news. It is deciding what to trust. (reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk)










