Opinion: Yup, Minnesota teens get their news from social media. But do you know why?

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Over the last year, I have often heard friends and classmates talking past each other, and past me, about the state of the world. It was true when Donald Trump won in November, and again when UnitedHealth executive Brian Thompson was shot and killed in New York. It has continued to be true about the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.

Sometimes we seem to be operating off completely different sets of facts. It wasn’t long before I started to wonder: Where are my peers getting their information? Do they read the news like I do?

If you ask a Minnesota adult where most teenagers get their news — and trust me, I am speaking from experience — they will likely give a chuckle and credit TikTok. The subtext: “Kids these days.” It’s the same phrase every generation uses about the one after it. To them, we are glued to social media for pretty much everything.

Well, I’m not. I’ll be a senior in high school next fall. I read the news every day — most often the New York Times and the Minnesota Star Tribune. I am also the national political correspondent and layout editor at my school’s paper, the Breck Bugle. I don’t consume a lot of social media, and I get very little of my news from it. However, I know many smart and thoughtful teenagers whose news habits are different from mine. Many of them will go on to vote in our future elections. Many will someday lead classrooms, others will lead businesses, and others will lead households — both here in Minnesota and beyond.

I wanted to learn why my peers make the news choices they do and to figure out how traditional news outlets could more effectively connect with us. So, I reached out to the leadership of the Minnesota Star Tribune and pitched them the following idea: a survey of hundreds of Minnesota high school students to better understand how and why they consume the news the way they do. The Star Tribune said yes, and connected me with two journalists from its audience and product teams with whom I have been working since February. Together, we crafted the survey and analyzed the results. I also interviewed several students to gain additional insight into their thinking. Here’s what I found.

As you may have guessed — either from reading this headline or from any prior knowledge you have about “kids these days” — the most popular source of news among the 368 Minnesota high school students who filled out my survey was social media.

Over three-fourths of respondents indicated that they used social platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube and Snapchat as their primary source of news. Close behind was friends and family — or, more specifically, word of mouth. In other words, for Minnesota teens, news is a social activity. We spread ideas about current events with our friends, we listen to and engage with our families’ views about the world, and we consume information and discuss our ideas on social platforms.

But contrary to what adults like to assume, Minnesota teenagers are not using social media as a news source simply because they are lazy or addicted to their phones. The data and interviews revealed they are using it for two main reasons: Traditional media outlets aren’t covering the things they find interesting, and they prefer to consume news in short-form video formats.

Even though 61.4% of respondents indicated that they were somewhat or extremely interested in current events, nearly half were just neutral about their agreement with the sentence, “Traditional media outlets cover what I am interested in.” Neutral is to a teen about as nah as it comes. This survey shows that Minnesota teenagers are overall interested in what is happening in the world around them. However, they are not finding the stories, formats or perspectives that interest them at traditional media outlets.

Every traditional news outlet would drool over a growing Gen Z readership, but Minnesota teens aren’t flocking to their coverage or its long-form articles. The way social media formats its news is much more interesting to them.

About three-fourths of respondents indicated that they preferred watching short-form video content such as TikTok videos, Instagram reels or YouTube shorts to consume their news.

Nearly 80 respondents also elaborated on this preference in the survey’s short-answer section, suggesting that news outlets should make more short videos and then provide links to stories if they want viewers to be able explore a topic further.

In a follow-up interview, Layla Scoll, a freshman at Edina High School, explained how short videos are essentially “information presented as entertainment,” which can be really engaging for young audiences. However, she said, social media creators “don’t have to cite their sources … [and] you have the creator’s bias within that story.” If, instead, “it’s a trusted media outlet … [creating] something similar,” Layla believed it “would be so engaging for younger audiences.”

If traditional outlets start to replicate the short-form video content that is so interesting to Minnesota teenagers, they will be able to engage with us as well as social media platforms can, while also providing us with news that is more reliable, unbiased, rooted in fact and thorough than social media will ever be. Traditional media outlets have a notable opportunity here.

Aside from creating more interesting short-form content, the survey results offer another suggestion for traditional media outlets looking to reach younger audiences: Establish trust. How? Motivate Minnesota teenagers to be interested in the world.

The survey results showed that Minnesota teenagers who are more interested in current events use traditional news sources more often. And Minnesota teenagers who use traditional news sources more often ultimately trust their sources more than teenagers who use non-traditional sources more often, who are less interested in current events in the first place.

The quantitative pattern is glaring, and the implication is clear. When Minnesota teenagers are more interested in current events, they are using, returning to, and trusting a more diverse set of news outlets, especially traditional ones.

This reality raises the question: How can we increase the degree to which Minnesota teenagers are interested in — and therefore want to reliably read and learn about — what’s happening in their state and in the wider world? The interviewees’ input on what they want from traditional news outlets offered some answers.

According to both Juniper Setterberg, a senior at Breck School, and Chloe Smith, a junior at Edina, the news is too one-sided. As Setterberg put it, “you either get a super left-leaning or super right-leaning source…the more central [perspectives] are kind of ignored…there needs to be a balance with what people read.” Relatedly, Smith explained that she would like to see more “reporting looking for all types of perspectives: from young people, to old people, and all sorts of demographics … not just trying to report from one side.”

Other students elaborated on the idea that traditional news outlets are simply too negative all the time. Aiden Glatzel, a freshman at Edina, wished news outlets would offer more stories that are not about tragedy. According to them, “a lot of the stories are attention-gripping, because [news outlets] want engagement,” but they should be more positive, and offer more hope for readers. Responding to a question about how young people are represented in mainstream news, Alex Pickering, a sophomore at Roseville Area High School, told me, “It’s very disheartening to know how little faith [news outlets] put in us. A lot of young people are doing really amazing things.”

So in summary: More interesting, short-form content from trusted sources mixed with impartial, positive stories could make more Minnesota teens want to read traditional media more.

That being said, motivating Minnesota high schoolers to care about the world isn’t only the responsibility of media organizations. Society as a whole needs to help teenagers develop an interest in current events, in turn motivating them to want to stay informed with traditional sources.

Whether it’s promoting initiatives to lower the cost barriers to reliable news (like more Minnesota high schools investing in the free school subscription plans that major outlets offer or encouraging students to make use of the Star Tribune’s one year of free digital access for high school graduates) or expanding current-events education in Minnesota high schools, or even launching local political programming that sparks curiosity about policy and its impact on students — something has to change. As Julia Ma, a freshman at Edina, put it: “If there’s more exposure to how issues affect people … [young] people will feel more connected to those events.”

To my fellow Minnesota teens: Real change will only happen once we start paying attention to the world and we demand that the world starts paying attention to us. Yes, staying informed matters. But also don’t forget that our interests — the interests of the “kids these days” — are exactly what the world, and especially the news, needs to pay more attention to.

Olivia Cordova Kramer is a rising high school senior at Breck School. She lives in Minneapolis.