The information disconnection is triggered

BarcelonaTen years ago, only 5% of people declared themselves to be little or not at all interested in the news, but in just a decade the percentage has tripled to 15%. If we look specifically at Spanish figures, it has gone from 1% in 2016 to 10% this year. This is data from the Reuters Institute's macro-survey, which also asked how many people disconnect from the news often or sometimes: from 29% it has risen to 42% (and from 26% to 37% in the Spanish case). All this shows that a substantial part of citizens are increasingly deciding to turn their backs on current events. This is what is called news fatigue, which affects the democratic health of countries and, understandably, has become one of the main headaches for the media.

In fact, according to this report, 80% of Spaniards between 18 and 24 years old stated in 2016 that in the previous week they had consumed news on web pages. Now only 38% do so. One might think that consumption has moved to other windows (and screens), but this alone does not explain this abrupt change: television, radio, and even social networks are also declining – albeit to a lesser extent. Only podcasts and AI services are rising, but they reach percentages that do not compensate for the blows to traditional media. In the age of content, information paradoxically trades down.

Catalonia is not specifically mentioned in the Reuters Institute report, but local studies on the matter suggest that this global phenomenon also affects young people here. The Future of Communication chair at UPF – in which ARA participates – promoted research that included a survey of 1,060 people between 18 and 24 years old with the aim of identifying the factors that drive them to disconnect from the news. The most repeated argument in these age groups is that if something is important, you will find it thanks to algorithms that present you with what they (consider that) interests you. With less importance, young people also cite as a factor the feeling of overload due to the excess of news and the impact on mental and emotional health from the accumulation of unpleasant or tense news.

Not all perspectives are bleak, however. The crisis of trust in media and journalists, which was one of the suggested factors, is not one of the most notable responses, not least because it is a generation that has already grown up relying on social media and its automatic recommendations to shape their media experience. “Considering that our data shows that trust in media and journalists does not predict avoidance among young people, we believe that just focusing on regaining trust is not enough,” explains Laura Pérez Altable, co-author of the report, to ARA.

For the academic, there are several lines of work from which to adapt formats, languages, and channels: “We should mitigate information overload, as in the fight for attention, saturation ends up expelling the younger audience. We must bet on curation and clear prioritization. We should also work on the emotional dimension, with constructive or solutions journalism, which does not deny the complexity of problems, but which integrates progress and human stories within the narrative to avoid the feeling of helplessness”.

For Pérez Altable, the strategy involves “seriously considering that 50% of young people believe that relevant information will reach them through social media": "This forces us to have a strategic and responsible presence on these platforms, combined with pedagogy and media education in schools about why journalistic mediation provides value that the algorithm cannot substitute,” she adds.

One problem, many solutions

Although the phenomenon of news avoidance is global, the recipes to mitigate it do not have to be so shared. This is the opinion of Nic Newman, one of the Reuters Institute researchers and lead author of the Digital News Report between 2012 and 2025. "The general trend, which we see in almost all countries, of seeing the proportion of people who say they avoid the news grow is true - he explains to this newspaper -. But the reasons are different in each country, although there is a factor that is indeed universal, and that is the feeling of negativity: we live with the notion that each piece of news is worse than the previous one, and this leads certain people to try to ration the amount of bad news they receive".

This has a lot to do with the polarization that social networks have fueled. Algorithms are designed to maximize user screen time, and an essential ingredient to achieve this is to provoke some visceral reaction. "Polarization causes people to be disillusioned with politics, to feel that the system no longer works for them, and because the debate is tense they decide to avoid it," says Newman. "This is particularly valid for young people, and we see it in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom, where there are high levels of news avoidance, and to some extent also in Spain, which is a politically polarized country. We find people who tell us that they avoid the news because it causes discussions", he adds.

It is not a matter of tone alone, but also of volume. In fact, in recent years several media outlets, including ARA, have opted to reduce news production against the inertia dictated by social networks, to focus more on relevant content. There is a timid shift, in this sense, in how the success of an editorial project is measured: media outlets that aspire to live off readers rather than advertising no longer prioritize raw clicks - volatile and susceptible to doping - as much as reading time. These long stays on the media outlet's page are achieved by concentrating efforts on creating fewer pieces but ones that engage more.

“If we limit ourselves to making more podcasts, more newsletters, more news... all this volume overwhelms people –says Newman–. “It’s about doing a little less, but with more meaning. But it’s a complicated challenge, because platforms pressure you and ask for volume. The ecosystem is part of the problem”. In this sense, and thinking specifically about young people, he also recommends creating explanatory pieces that allow people to get into a topic even if they feel they have arrived late.

In the Reuters study, in contrast to the one conducted among young people by the UPF, distrust in the media does appear as one of the most frequent reasons to justify this distancing (35%), alongside content saturation (35%) and the negative emotional impact caused by continuous contact with current events. This indicates a generational gap, according to the authors. “Above the age of 45, the population still has the habit of watching the news, and has largely maintained it –analyzes Newman–. Citizens feel involved in following current events and even feel it as a civic duty, because they consider news to be important for society”.

The researcher is skeptical about the notion that news now comes looking for us. He considers that many of the feeds on social networks are, in reality, escapism. Contrary to the notion of living hyperconnected and under constant bombardment of information, if the user does not click on political or current affairs issues, their algorithm will tend to isolate them from the news. “What we do detect is that people are ceasing to trust journalists and media outlets to place their trust in individual people and content creators. That’s why they are gravitating towards podcasters who, in a way, mix a bit of politics with comedy or humor. And, of course, there is a whole ecosystem of creators who do not necessarily subscribe to journalistic standards”, says Newman.

Who suffers more from fatigue?

The countries that most escape this trend are the Nordic ones, such as Finland, Sweden, and Norway, where societies are generally less politicized, have higher reading and educational levels, and also healthy levels of trust in traditional media.

An report by the Al Jazeera Institute on news avoidance notes a key date in this prevalence of news fatigue: “Although it is not a new phenomenon, skepticism around journalism intensified during the coronavirus pandemic, as anti-vaccine activists and conspiracy theorists questioned the veracity and accuracy of facts about covid-19 and the information provided by the media and even governments,” they state.

Besides age, gender also plays a role: women tend to disconnect more from current events, and here two factors are pointed out. The first is that they are more aware of personal well-being and societal sexist biases, which keeps them further from power than men. In fact, according to Benjamin Toff, Ruth Palmer, and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, authors of the book Avoiding the news, the more of a glass ceiling there is for women in a given market, the higher the rate of information disconnection among the female population.

The other major factor is the economic one. “People of lower socioeconomic status are much more likely to be consistent news avoiders than those in a more advantageous economic position,” the book explains. “For example, in our survey in the United States, only 11% of news avoiders had a university degree, while among those who had above-average news consumption, the percentage was almost 50%. Similar differences were observed regarding family income: news avoiders were almost twice as likely to be unemployed (28%) compared to average news users (17%) or those with high news consumption (8%).”

“Politics is broken – Newman concludes for his part. Young people no longer buy into polarization, nor the old scheme of this one says X and the other replies Y. The media cannot be seen as part of the same system. We need to rethink how we cover politics informatively.”