NEWS AND
AMERICA'S
KIDS
How Young People Perceive and
Are Impacted by the News
common sense is grateful for the generous support
and underwriting that funded this research report:
Jennifer Caldwell and John H.N. FisherEva and Bill Price
Common Sense is the leading
independent nonproft organization
dedicated to helping kids thrive in
a world of media and technology.
We empower parents, teachers,
and policymakers by providing
unbiased information, trusted advice,
and innovative tools to help them harness
the power of media and technology as
a positive force in all kids’ lives.
commonsense
James P. Steyer,
founder and CEO
A LETTER FROM OUR FOUNDER
March 8, 2017
Kids today are exposed to news in unprecedented ways. Unlike previous generations who
grew up reading newspapers, listening to the radio, and watching broadcast news, often
alongside parents, young people today get their news instantly, on personal devices, and
from a variety of unfltered sources.
What do kids think of the news media, and what kind of impact is this constant barrage
of headlines having on them That is what we set out to discover in this report,
News
and America’s Kids: How Young People Perceive and Are Impacted by the News
. The more we
know about how kids get news and how the news makes them feel, the more effective we
all can be in helping them navigate the rapidly evolving media landscape.
As you will see in our groundbreaking report, we learned that children and youth share
some complex feelings about the media. These include an overall lack of trust in the
news and not being able to tell the difference between real and fake news. But we also
discovered some new concerns from a kid’s perspective: They feel misunderstood,
neglected, and misrepresented in the news. Put simply, they don’t see their faces or
voices in the coverage. And they see serious racial and gender bias.
We were especially fascinated to see how much kids value news and how often they
consume it. They feel smarter and more informed when they read the news and better
prepared to make a difference in their communities.
Listening to this feedback from young people is important. Parents, educators,
policymakers, and the media industry all have the ability to help kids have valuable media
experiences. We need America’s next generation to be engaged citizens— and knowing
how to discern reliable information is a big part of that.
At Common Sense, we are committed to providing news and media-literacy education
and support to kids, parents, and educators. We also are committed to ensuring that
leading media companies are thinking about kids just as much as clicks and ratings when
they make decisions. And fnally, the No. 1 place where young people hear about news is
from the adults in their lives. Since many of us are those same adults (parents), we can
model how we consume news, encourage our kids to think critically about sources, and
discuss the news with the children in our lives.
We all have a responsibility to listen to what our kids have to say and take actions that
will improve the way they consume news and information in the future. At Common
Sense, we do that every day, and we hope you will, too, after reading and sharing this
report with children you love.
Suggested citation: Robb, M. B. (2017).
News and America’s kids: How young people perceive and are impacted by the news
. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.
CREDITS
Author: Michael B. Robb
Data collection and analysis:Jordon Peugh and Suzanne Zedar, SSRS
Copy editor: Jenny Pritchett
Designers: Chloe Leng and Dana Herrick
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Key Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
How Children Source News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Where Children Currently Are Getting News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
How Often Children Get News from Different Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Children’s Preferred Source of News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Children’s Use of Social Media as a News Source. . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Children’s Social Media Usage and Usage for News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Children’s Preferred Social Media Site for News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Children’s Trust in and Perception of Accuracy of the News . . . . . . . 13
Trust in News Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Belief in Accuracy of Online News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Attention to Sources of Stories Found on Social Media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Effort to Verify the Accuracy of News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Ability to Tell Fake News from Real News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Sharing False Information Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Children’s Feelings and Opinions About News and News Issues . . . . . 19
Children’s Feelings When They Are Exposed to News and News Headlines . . . . . . 19
News Is Important to Children. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Relevance of News to Children. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Bias in the News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Issues of Importance to Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Questionnaire Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Data Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Weighting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Appendix: Toplines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Common Sense Board of Directors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
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