Social media can be useful place to gather news, but in spite of the fact that this is the case most people don’t seem to trust tech platforms for news. These platforms have become notorious due to the high quantity of misinformation and fake news that is present on them, although Google seems to be more trustworthy than most other platforms that are out there. A survey recently conducted by Reuters shed some light on which platforms are trusted and which aren’t with all things having been considered and taken into account.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that trust in news in general is on the decline. Around 46% of British respondents to this survey stated that they don’t like to read the news anymore. 52% said that they trusted Google as a source of news, but only 20% said the same for TikTok.
Meta’s platforms including Facebook and Instagram also performed really poorly based on this survey. Only 27% of the people that responded to this survey said that they trusted news that they got from Facebook, and only 24% said the same for Instagram.
In the US, only 49% of people trust the overall news cycle, but they tended to trust news more than might have been the case otherwise if they got it from Google. 53% of American respondents to this survey said that they trusted news from Google, which suggests that Google is a far more trustworthy outlet than the wider news industry.
There is also quite a bit of disparity based on the ages of the people who were interviewed and surveyed. For example, only 3% of people aged over 55 trusted news from TikTok, but for people under the age of 35 this number jumped to around 40%. Hence, younger people are more trusting of social media platforms likely due to their ability to navigate the landscape of fake news and their higher degree of knowledge that helps them spot misinformation and avoid giving it any credence while they consume news.
