In summer 2016, in the midst of the presidential campaign, the Knight study held a series of 90-minute sessions with six focus groups of people, male and female of different races and ethnicities, between the ages of 14 and 24 in three different cities. While that is obviously a young cohort, it does represent the future of news consumption. From the report:

Today’s young news consumers face a dizzying array of options for getting their news. While their parents’ generation relied on print media, television, and radio, teens and young adults now have an ever-expanding suite of platforms to supplement those traditional formats; news and magazine websites, blogs, social media, messaging apps, text alerts, online video, GIFs, emojis and even virtual reality experiences may play a role in how today’s youth engage with the news. Less than a decade ago, simply getting any kind of news on a mobile device was considered a leading-edge activity.

Today, news consumption has become mobile by default. Smartphone-based news consumption has increased notably in the past two years, such that 89 percent of mobile phone users in the U.S. now access news and information on their devices. These shifting trends in consumer behavior are also evident in traffic patterns; the majority of the top 50 digital news websites reported in 2015 that visits from mobile devices outpaced those from desktop computers.

Focus group participants all reported that news pops up in all social media feeds, whether the person is seeking news or not. “Typically, a lot of times, I’ll look at the news by accident. Like I accidentally swiped left,” one participant said. “If I don’t see it on social media, I’m not going to hear it,” said another.

Respondents also put more stock in user-generated content, such as cell phone video that can counter the official evidence from law enforcement.

Video, especially live video, is generally considered to be more reliable than many other news sources. Young adults believed that individuals on the ground would have less motivation to manipulate the footage than a media company. For instance, video taken by a protester filming from inside a march held more credibility for many than CNN’s coverage professionally filmed from a few feet away and then later edited for repeat airing.

Even what younger news consumers call “news” goes outside the boundaries of traditional journalism. But the report points out that that definition is changing even within news organizations. “Historically, definitions of what qualifies as news have been codified by large professional journalism outlets that have also served as gatekeepers of the news,” the report says. “But teens and adults have little if any experience with that world.”

There is lots of material in the report and many quotes by participants, some spot on and some that make the respondent sound uninvolved and naive (two of the focus groups were teenagers, after all). Traditional media’s role ends up being a kind of verifier of material found elsewhere. As the Knight study concluded:

The conclusions from the Knight study were similar to conclusions from two studies from a year earlier, which found higher rates of media distrust and more news consumption from social media by younger adults. A study by Pew Research Center found that Millennials are one-and-a-half times more likely to get news from Facebook than from TV news. “Social media look to be the local TV of the Millennial generation,” the Pew study says.

Another study by the Media Insight Project, a collaboration of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 69 percent of Millennials seek out news at least once a day, and 40 percent look for news several times a day. Four out of 10 also pay for at least one news-specific service, app, or digital subscription. It’s no surprise that national papers have been pushing online subscriptions in an attempt to gain readers, especially younger ones.

Which brings us to the final point: There was one traditional news source younger people relied on even more than their elders: national newspapers. As long as they could read those papers online.

According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, during the 2016 election, people 18-29 and 30-49 got their news at much higher rates from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal than did those 50 and older. From the Pew survey:

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post were regular election news sources for about two-in-ten adults ages 18-29 and 30-49, roughly twice the rate of older age groups. For The Wall Street Journal, 15% of 18- to 29-year-olds and 12% of 30- to 49-year-olds regularly got election news there, higher than those ages 65 and older (7%), but about on par with 50- to 64-year-olds (8%). All age groups were about equally likely to get election news from USA Today. …

The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal have aggressively pursued online audiences, which tend to be younger. And indeed, attracting these younger, digital readers may help grow digital advertising revenue and even subscriptions. Nonetheless, most publishers still rely more heavily on print dollars. In other words, attracting young readers may be just one step in securing newspapers’ future.