Scrolling through? Generational divides in media consumption and their impact on trust and polarization

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine news consumption among different generations, with a focus on younger adults. Additionally, we investigate how social media news use and news minimalism influence political and media trust, as well as affective polarization during an election campaign. We conducted a longitudinal survey during the run-up to the Dutch general election in November 2023 (Wave 1: N = 2405; Wave 2: N = 1785). Results show that young adults are characterized not only by substantially higher social media use but also by comparatively high levels of trust and low levels of polarization. Interestingly, news minimalism is more widespread. Finally, we found that the effects of media repertoires on trust and polarization are limited and appear to be largely absent when examining changes over time.

Keywords

young adults social media news minimalism political trust affective polarization generational differences

Media consumption among young adults differs in various ways compared to older generations (Boulianne and Shehata, 2022; Boulianne and Theocharis, 2020; Duvekot et al., 2024). What stands out is that their news consumption is dominated by social media use. Young adults, the “digital and social natives” (p. 12), use social media as their primary source of information (Newman et al., 2025). Older generations, those above 55 years old, are more likely to consume news via television (Newman et al., 2025). Concerns exist about diversity and quality of information, and the level of context that young adults receive via social media news consumption (Edgerly, 2017). In the high-choice media landscape, social media news is algorithmically curated and dominated by people's social networks (Duvekot et al., 2024), and that may lead to news consumption that is increasingly aligned with young people's existing beliefs. While selectively selecting news based on anticipated agreement is certainly not new (Iyengar and Hahn, 2009), research on selective exposure (e.g., Weeks et al., 2017) has often been argued that when media choices are enhanced—which is the case with the dominance of social media—people are more likely to consume news that aligns with their prior (political) beliefs (Iyengar and Hahn, 2009). This could, in turn, lead to less cross-cutting exposure and even lead to people tuning out of news and may potentially lead to more divides and even polarization (Arceneaux and Johnson, 2013; Lorenz-Spreen et al., 2023). Furthermore, based on Cultivation Theory (Mean World Syndrome), news exposure online might be more often characterized by negativity and polarizing content (Andersen et al., 2024). Repeated exposure to such content may distort perceptions of reality. Consequently, the world might be seen as more threatening for people. This could potentially lead to more negative perceptions of society and possibly democracy. Yet, this notion has also been challenged by others (Beam et al., 2018). This leads to a scholarly discussion that we will build upon in this study.

At the same time, scholars expressed growing concerns about the lack of news consumption among these younger generations (Newman et al., 2025). While a large share of people in various countries say they avoid the news, there is an increase in worry that this trend is especially noticeable among younger generations (Newman et al., 2025). A lack of news consumption can have negative consequences: It makes it more difficult to participate in a society in a meaningful democratic way when people are not informed about society's most important challenges and have an understanding of other perspectives. In other words, a lack of news consumption could also lead to less trust in politics and the media, but also to more polarization.

Although there has been considerable research on how young people define, consume, and evaluate news (see for an overview of the literature, Duvekot et al., 2024), to date, only a limited number of studies have been conducted that analyze news consumption patterns among different generations of (younger) adults and their impact on trust and polarization. We will be adding to this body of work by including more recent findings on the relationship between news consumption, trust, and participation using longitudinal data in the Dutch context. We ask the following question: To what extent do social media use and news minimalism influence political and media trust, as well as affective polarization, across different age groups? We have a particular focus on young adults, and we deployed a longitudinal survey during the run-up to the Dutch general election in November 2023 to examine our assumptions.

Understanding the generational divide in media consumption

The current media system is characterized by having a multitude of options of information to choose from. Also, the way people consume news is becoming increasingly hybrid. This is especially evident on social media, where political news is encountered while scrolling through updates from friends, influencers, and strangers. Alongside the issue of more passive news consumption via social media, the question of why younger people tune out from the news has been on the research agenda for many years (Mindich, 2005). But also more recently, Edgerly (2017) found in an interview study that a set of young people “avoided the news media in favor of functional information alternatives” (p. 358). In a similar vein, Espeland (2024) uncovered, in a longitudinal study, not only that younger people but also those with low political interest, are more likely to avoid the news. Furthermore, the study revealed that the effect of political interest on news avoidance became stronger for younger people than older people. In other words, “being uninterested in politics and being younger increases the probability of avoiding news media” (Espeland, 2024, 1492). It may be expected that for younger adults, tuning out of more traditional news but with high consumption of social media (for news), alters the way in which and how much news is consumed. This is in line with the Digital News Report 2025 from the Reuters Institute (Newman et al., 2025). They found in 48 markets that the dependency on social media for news is the highest among younger people. Specifically, they note that 44% of 18 to 24-year-olds say that social media are their main source of news, and 38% of 25 to 34-year-olds indicate this. Reasons for this shift might be that “[y]ounger groups, especially those aged 18–24, are much more likely than older ones to prefer watching – or listening to – the news” (p. 19), and they might expect that news will find them via their social media platforms (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2017). Furthermore, research shows that, in general, young people (under 35) are more likely to trust news on social media platforms (Camila et al., 2022).

Turning to news avoidance, a similar pattern can be observed. In general, the Digital News Report (Newman et al., 2025) shows that 40% of the general population sometimes or often avoids the news. The reason lies in the fact that they are more likely to feel powerless in the face of fundamental issues, for example, climate change or economic insecurity. Other reasons that were mentioned for avoiding the news are that they do not see the relevance of it in their lives. Intriguingly, young people (those younger than 35) also said they find the news hard to understand and follow. A bit more optimistically, Duvekot et al. (2024) argue that most young people do remain interested in news; it is just the way they consume it has changed significantly, mainly due to the consumption of news via social media. It means that their news consumption is sometimes more active, but—at the same time—also more passive. Yet, they also note that young people have more “avoidance tendencies” (p. 1).

It should be noted that news avoidance and minimal consumption of news are not necessarily the same. News avoidance is complex (de Bruin et al., 2025) and can be conceptualized in many different ways (Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020). Some might avoid all news, others consume more alternative news, some avoid only specific political or societal issues, and others avoid news irregularly (e.g., because of time constraints; de Bruin et al., 2025). The same is true for news minimalism. Though in general, news minimalists are often regarded as people who consume very little news, although they still consume some news (Strömbäck et al., 2018). However, the concepts are related as news minimalists are usually more likely to also engage in news avoidance (Vliegenthart et al., 2026). So, to sum up, previous evidence is quite clear in this case. News avoidance among young adults is more prevalent, but when individuals actually do consume news, it is most often through social media. Hence, based on previous work that consistently points in the same direction, we hypothesize the following:

H1: Young adults (18–24) use social media more often for news and consume less news overall, compared to other age groups.

Effects on trust and polarization

The most important question that follows from the expected shift in news consumption is to understand its consequences. Several theoretical assumptions exist that focus on the relationship between (digital) news consumption and news avoidance on political trust and polarization. The first theory that is often mentioned finds its roots in the Cultivation Theory (Gerbner, 1998) and, based upon this, the Mean World Syndrome. In its original form, cultivation theory predicts that when people spend more time being immersed in a mediated world (historically, television), their perceptions about reality might reflect that mediated world (Morgan et al., 2014). If that mediated world is, in our case, social media, more often dominated by negative and polarizing content (Kim et al., 2021; Oz et al., 2018), continuous use may affect people's perceptions of reality and, in turn, the world appears more threatening than it is. As a result, people may develop increasingly negative views of the media and, by extension, of politics if they appear not to address these societal challenges. This could lead to lower media trust and trust in politics.

Moreover, increased exposure to incivility, misinformation, or negative content online may further heighten levels of polarization. Based on the Selective Exposure Literature (e.g., Weeks et al., 2017), social media consumption might lead to more selectivity. This means that people are more likely to consume news that aligns with their prior beliefs because their social network online reads the same type of information (Cinelli et al., 2021), which might be further strengthened by algorithms that amplify content (Pariser, 2011). This can further fuel polarization, as exposure to content aligned with prior beliefs reduces cross-cutting exposure and fosters more one-sided opinion formation. Hence, this could then also fuel a spiral. It has often been suggested that people prefer attitude-consistent information, and because people engage in motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990), this might lead to even less media use (Strömbäck et al., 2020).

When turning to the empirical literature, we often observed negative effects of social media news consumption on both political and media trust, as well as polarization. Using cross-sectional survey data from the Eurobarometer, Ceron (2015) found that social media news consumption is negatively associated with political trust. In a similar vein, comparative research in 35 countries shows that the use of mainstream or alternative news is positively linked to higher levels of trust in the news, but they found that using social media as a main source of news is related to lower levels of trust in the news (Kalogeropoulos et al., 2019). Park et al. (2020) also observed that increased use of social media for news was associated with lower levels of trust in the media, using secondary data analysis in 26 countries. In a seminal literature review by Lorenz-Spreen et al. (2023), it was found that a negative association exists between digital media and political polarization, with some nuances. They uncovered that “high digital media use was for the most part linked to higher levels of polarization, although there was some evidence for balanced online discourse without pronounced patterns of polarization […], as well as evidence for potentially depolarizing tendencies” (p. 80). Based on these theoretical considerations and empirical evidence, we propose the following hypothesis:

H2: Social media use and news minimalism yield (a) lower levels of political and media trust, and (b) higher levels of affective polarization.

Different generations, different effects?

While research on the relationship between (social) media consumption on the one hand, and trust and polarization on the other hand is growing, less focus has been on younger generations. Using qualitative research, Swart and Broersma (2022) uncovered that young people have different tactics when it comes to validating news on social media. They often engage in pragmatic shortcuts and make intuitive judgments to assess news, instead of comparing and checking sources. As a consequence, these youth assess information online differently. When young people rely heavily on social media for information (Camila et al., 2022), they are often exposed to content that is more hostile, negative, and less diverse than traditional news sources. If they do not engage critically with these sources, such as questioning the credibility of the information (Swart and Broersma, 2022), they may be more influenced by such negative content. This can amplify the impact of social media on their attitudes, leading to even lower trust in media and politics and stronger perceptions of polarization compared to older adults who either consume more diverse news or who engage more critically in evaluating information.

Also, young adults who consume minimal news or simply avoid the news might be strongly affected. When they are not socialized with news, they might have a lack of context (correction to misinformation), which might lead to the interpretation of societal and political situations that are incorrect. In turn, this could lead to less trust in politics, the media, and above all, more polarization. However, political polarization might not always increase with minimal media exposure. In offline communities, people might experience less polarization because their experienced social interactions may be less negative and conflicting. With limited exposure to news, individuals may actually perceive less polarization, since they are less aware of more polarizing narratives on social media. Hence, based on these considerations, we still largely assume that younger people are more vulnerable to negativity on social media. Hence, we argue that:

H3: The hypothesized effects in H2 are stronger for young adults than for other age groups.

Changes in trust and polarization across age groups

Lastly, we want to explore how the effects of social media use and news minimalism affect changes in trust and polarization. As we explained above, people tend to prefer attitude-consistent information, and importantly, people engage in motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990). Consequently, a negative spiral might emerge, which shows that if people develop less trust in politics and the media during an election campaign, these negative associations will widen, leading to a stronger change in trust and polarization. This might be in contrast with changes in traditional media consumption, as research indicates that mainstream media consumption convinces people that the news they see there is more trustworthy, as it shows what trustworthy journalism is (Tsfati et al., 2025). Such cultivation mechanisms might be absent for social media, and this is even more so when only a minimum amount of news is consumed. However, research on the change in trust and polarization connected with social media use, in particular for younger people, is limited. We, therefore, pose an explorative research question:

RQ: What are the effects of social media use and news minimalism on changes in trust and polarization throughout an election campaign, and do those effects differ across age groups?

Method

To test our hypotheses, we rely on a seven-wave panel survey conducted during the Dutch parliamentary election campaign. The Netherlands is a multiparty democracy with a system of proportional representation and a high number of political parties in parliament. The media landscape is also highly diverse, with a wide range of different media with distinct identities yet high degrees of professionalism. A central position is held by the public broadcaster (NPO), which, supported by public funding, provides the main news broadcasts, a leading news website, and several talk shows. Commercial television also plays an important role. The newspaper sector is dominated by two major publishing groups but continues to offer a broad range of independent outlets. Levels of media trust in the Netherlands are comparatively high (Commissariaat voor de Media, 2025).

The first wave of our study was launched shortly after the government's resignation and the announcement of elections (21 July 2023). Wave 2 followed at the end of the summer recess, and subsequent waves were fielded at two-week intervals, with the final (post-election) wave on the day after the vote. Wave 1 included 2405 respondents (response rate 43.7%), recruited to be broadly representative by age, gender, region, and education, with oversamples of hard-to-reach groups. A total of 1780 respondents completed Wave 7 (retention rate 74.0%). For this study, we rely on the first and final waves of the study.

Measures

Political trust was measured by respondents’ trust in the Dutch government and parliament (7-point scale). Trust in government started relatively low, reflecting the cabinet's collapse, but rose over the campaign (Wave 1: M = 3.60, SD = 1.55; Wave 7: M = 3.98, SD = 1.68; t = −7.51, p < .001). Trust in parliament showed a similar upward trend (Wave 1: M = 3.75, SD = 1.46; Wave 7: M = 4.14, SD = 1.59; t = −8.36, p < .001). As the two items were highly correlated (r = .76 in Wave 1; r = .72 in Wave 7), we averaged them into one trust measure. Furthermore, we included trust in news media (such as newspapers, magazines, television, and radio broadcasters; Wave 1: M = 4.17, SD = 1.49; Wave 7: M = 4.31, SD = 1.79) and social media (Wave 1: M = 2.07, SD = 1.11; Wave 7: M = 2.04, SD = 1.11).

Affective polarization was measured with a feeling thermometer (0–100) for all major parties (10 in Wave 1; 11 in Wave 7, including the new party New Social Contract). Using Wagner's (2021) method, we calculated each respondent's weighted party affect differences, applying polling averages (Wave 1) and election results (Wave 7) as weights. Polarization increased moderately during the campaign (Wave 1: M = 21.22, SD = 7.63; Wave 7: M = 22.81, SD = 8.55; t = −6.42, p < .001).

Age was measured in different categories as used by the polling company: 18–24 (N = 222 in Wave 1), 25–34 (N = 367), 35–49 (N = 362), 50–64 (N = 745), 65+ (N = 709).

Media use was measured in Wave 1 by asking respondents how many days in the past week they used a range of outlets (scales 1–8). A latent profile analysis (using tidyLPA in R) tested 3–6 profiles; we selected a five-profile solution (see for more information, Remoortere and Vliegenthart, 2025). The groups identified were:

Quality media users (N = 130): above-average consumption of de Volkskrant, NRC Handelsblad, podcasts, and nos.nl.

Public television users (N = 417): high use of NOS Journaal, 1Vandaag, Nieuwsuur, Op1, and regional papers.

Commercial media users (N = 207): frequent use of RTL Nieuws, Hart van Nederland, EditieNL, and talk show Renze.

Social media users (N = 118): reliance on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

News minimalists (N = 943): generally low consumption, with moderate exposure to NOS Journaal and nos.nl.

Analysis

First, we compare the variation in media profiles across different age groups. We also compare trust and polarization across different age groups. Second, we use the media profiles to predict both levels of trust and polarization, as well as changes in trust and polarization during the election campaign, and so for the different age groups. In those multivariate regression models, we include the following control variables: gender (48.48% females), education (three levels: low N = 698, 29.0%; middle N = 747, 31.1%; high N = 959, 39.9%), political interest (7-point scale, M = 4.89, SD = 1.46), and left-right self-positioning (11-point scale, M = 5.55, SD = 2.98).

Results

Figure 1 presents how age groups differ in the presence of different media profiles. Indeed, the distribution of media profiles is significantly different across age groups (χ²(16) = 721.25, p < .001). As hypothesized, the 18–24 age group has a substantially larger presence in the social media profile than all other categories (30.6% compared to the overall 7.6%). While in other age categories, the social media profile is only marginally present, in the youngest age group, this category is the second largest one. The news minimalism profile is the most dominant one among young people (57.7%), but this is true for all age categories—overall 54.4% of the respondents are news minimalists. These results are in line with our first hypothesis, which predicted social media use and news minimalism to be more prevalent among the youngest age group.

Figure 1.

Media profiles across different age groups.

Do we also find lower levels of trust and higher levels of polarization among young people? Figures 2 and 3 provide an answer, and that answer is negative. Overall, we find slightly higher levels of political trust among young people (M = 3.81 compared to M = 3.67 overall). Differences are significant overall (F = 3.14, p < .05, df = 4), but multigroup comparisons with Bonferroni corrections do not show any significant differences between the 18–24 group and any of the other groups. For news media, we see a similar pattern: the youngest group is actually the most trusting one (M = 4.40). Again, differences are overall significant (F = 3.16, p < .05, df = 4) and here, mean comparisons show significant differences between the youngest group and the 35–49 and 50–64 age groups. Finally, young people are also trusting social media most, though scores are low in absolute terms (M = 2.51). Here, differences are somewhat larger (F = 13.19, p < .001, df = 4) and young people score significantly higher than all other age groups.

Figure 2.

Trust across age groups.

Figure 3.

Affective polarization and changes in affective polarization across age groups.

Figure 3 demonstrates the levels of affective polarization among different age groups. Again, we find that young people stand out in positive terms: their levels of affective polarization are the lowest. However, the differences are not significant overall (F = 1.73, p = .14).

We see that overall, trust increases slightly throughout the campaign (Figure 4), both in politics and media, but these changes do not differ across age groups (F = 1.39, p = .23, df = 4 for political trust, F = .94, p = .44, df = 4 for media trust). Social media trust levels decrease even further, again across the board (F = 1.03, p = .39, df = 4). Polarization increases throughout the campaign, which is intuitive, given the fact that during this period, differences between political parties become more salient. But again, this is a general trend with no significant differences across age groups (F = 2.05, p = .09, df = 4).

Figure 4.

Changes in trust throughout the election campaign.

Overall, these descriptive statistics do not seem to warrant an image of deprived youth. However, we need to explore further how (social) media use differentially impacts trust and polarization. Table 1 presents the effects of the different media profiles on political trust. Here, we see that overall, having a social media profile is associated with lower levels of trust, but this effect is not significant in the 18–24 age category. News minimalism is not significantly associated with trust, not for the overall sample and also not for the youngest age group.

Table 1.

Predicting political trust.

	Total	18–24	25–34	35–49	50–64	65+
Public TV	−0.035	−0.341	0.070	0.378	−0.089	−0.034
Commercial TV	−0.142	−0.690	−0.122	−0.064	−0.141	−0.085
Social media	−0.381*	−0.207	−0.128	−0.916**	0.117	−0.567
News minimalism	−0.172	0.200	−0.267	−0.212	−0.078	−0.281

Note. Unstandardized regression coefficients from models that also control for gender, education, political interest, and left-right positioning; quality media serves as reference category; * p < .05; ** p < .01.

Table 2 presents the same analysis, now focusing on media trust. Again, we find no evidence for the detrimental effects of social media and news minimalism. Both are not associated with lower levels of media trust compared to the reference category (quality media). Television use is associated with higher levels of media trust, particularly in the 35–49 age group.

Table 2.

Predicting media trust.

	Total	18–24	25–34	35–49	50–64	65+
Public TV	0.267*	1.146	0.124	1.193**	0.219	−0.037
Commercial TV	0.303*	0.165	−0.595	1.193**	−0.033	0.285
Social media	−0.119	0.141	−0.684*	0.533	0.170	−0.684
News minimalism	−0.024	0.434	−0.338	0.571*	−0.258	−0.239

Table 3 presents the results for social media trust. Here we see that people falling in the social media profile have more trust in social media, which seems to be a logical association.

Table 3.

Predicting social media trust.

	Total	18–24	25–34	35–49	50–64	65+
Public TV	0.237*	−0.630	0.384	0.687*	0.102	0.340
Commercial TV	0.530**	1.113*	−0.128	0.568	0.351	0.745**
Social media	0.839**	0.907**	1.016*	0.863**	0.547*	1.047**
News minimalism	0.202*	0.470	0.051	0.366	0.034	0.350

Overall, our results for the trust variables do not provide evidence for hypotheses 2 and 3. The effects of media profiles on trust are limited and not more outspoken for young people. We now look at polarization and test whether we find media repertoire effects here. The answer is a clear no: media repertoires are not related to polarization. Thus, overall, we indeed have to reject both hypotheses 2 and 3.

Research question 1 asked whether any effects of social media use and news minimalism on changes in trust and polarization throughout an election campaign exist. We reran the models in Tables 1 to 4 with changes in trust and polarization as dependent variables. In all those analyses, there were no significant relationships between media repertoires and changes in trust and polarization.

Table 4.

Predicting affective polarization.

	Total	18–24	25–34	35–49	50–64	65+
Public TV	−0.178	2.165	−2.413	1.241	1.148	−2.835
Commercial TV	−0.384	−2.966	−2.495	0.528	−0.227	−2.201
Social media	0.542	0.673	1.453	2.054	1.141	2.724
News minimalism	−0.307	−0.377	0.046	−0.365	0.309	−3.004

Discussion and conclusion

This study investigates generational differences in media repertoires and their implications for political trust, media trust, and affective polarization. In our analyses, we focus on the 2023 Dutch parliamentary election campaign. Our analyses confirm that younger adults differ more clearly from older cohorts in how they engage with the news. They are far more likely to be found in the “social media” and somewhat more likely in the “news minimalist” profiles than older people, which is in line with broader evidence on generational shifts in news consumption (Duvekot et al., 2024; Newman et al., 2025). Similarly, our results provide little empirical evidence to support often-voiced concerns about the democratic consequences of such media habits. Contrary to expectations derived from the literature on the role of social media in democracies (see for an overview, Lorenz-Spreen et al., 2023), young adults in our study displayed comparatively high levels of trust in politics and the media and low levels of affective polarization. Moreover, social media use and news minimalism were not consistently associated with lower trust or heightened polarization, either cross-sectionally or in terms of change throughout the campaign.

These findings contribute to ongoing scholarly debates about whether digital news consumption necessarily erodes democratic attitudes. Much of the literature has stressed the potential risks of algorithmically curated news environments, such as echo chambers, misinformation, and selective exposure (e.g., Cinelli et al., 2021; Lorenz-Spreen et al., 2023). Our study provides a more nuanced picture. While social media use was generally associated with lower levels of political trust, this relationship did not hold for the youngest group. Similarly, news minimalism, often framed as a democratic vulnerability, was not linked to low levels of or declines in trust, nor to high levels of, or increases in, polarization. These findings suggest that fears of a “deprived youth” disengaging from democracy may be overstated, at least in the Dutch context. Young adults appear to navigate their media environments in ways that do not necessarily produce negative democratic outcomes.

Several factors may explain this more optimistic pattern. First, Dutch media institutions are comparatively strong, and levels of overall media trust are high (Commissariaat voor de Media, 2025). Even minimal exposure to public broadcasting or quality outlets may provide a substantial political information buffer against erosion of trust. Second, young adults may develop, to some extent, pragmatic strategies to evaluate online information (Swart and Broersma, 2022), which can mitigate some of the risks associated with heavy social media use. Finally, trust and polarization are multidimensional constructs that may not be as immediately affected by short-term changes in media use as often assumed. Longitudinal shifts may require more sustained exposure or crises of legitimacy to materialize. In other words, young people might have simply not “matured” in their trust and polarization levels yet.

At the same time, our findings should not be read as dismissing the potential risks of generational shifts in news consumption. While young people currently report relatively high levels of trust and low polarization, their heavy reliance on social media does imply exposure to more fragmented, personalized, and sometimes hostile information environments. Over the longer term, the dominance of social media and minimalism in news repertoires could limit opportunities for cross-cutting exposure and deliberation, particularly if levels of political interest remain modest. This raises important questions about the resilience of these positive outcomes over time and across political contexts, which would require attention in follow-up studies. For instance, future work could take the approach of a closer in-depth qualitative study of young people's practices and their own interpretations of how they relate to the sources they trust online. It would be interesting to examine how young people come across different types of information online (e.g., legacy news, alternative news, and influencers), to what extent they give meaning to that information, and how they are affected by it. In addition, it would be crucial to better understand how the combination of these information sources leads to an overall interpretation of that information.

This study also has some limitations. Our measures of media use rely on self-reported frequency, which may underestimate incidental and algorithmic encounters with political information. The profiles derived from latent profile analysis provide a useful approximation but cannot capture the full complexity of hybrid news repertoires. Furthermore, our design focuses on one national context with comparatively high levels of baseline trust and a pluralist media system. The dynamics we observe may not generalize to countries with more polarized political landscapes or more partisan media environments. Finally, although our panel design improves on cross-sectional studies, the two-wave analyses of change remain relatively short-term. Longer-term longitudinal designs would be better suited to capturing the cumulative effects of news avoidance or social media dependence.

Despite these caveats, our findings carry significant implications for both scholarship and practice. Researchers underscore the importance of moving beyond deterministic accounts of digital media as inherently corrosive to democracy. Future studies should continue to explore contextual moderators—including national media systems, institutional trust, and campaign dynamics—that condition the impact of media repertoires on democratic attitudes. For practitioners and policymakers, the results suggest that alarmist narratives about disengaged or misinformed youth may be counterproductive. Instead, efforts might focus on leveraging young people's preferred platforms to strengthen trust and civic engagement, ensuring that credible information is visible and accessible in the spaces where they already encounter news.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Sanne Kruikemeier

Rens Vliegenthart

Ethical approval

Ethical approval by the WUR ethical committee, file number 2023–046.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is part of the project “The mobilization of political dissatisfaction: causes, content and consequences” with file number VI.C.221.044 of the research programme Talentprogram Vici, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This research is part of the project “Fueling the fire: How do social media contribute to polarization?” with file number VI.Vidi.231S.070 of the research programme Talentprogram Vidi, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under the grant [grant ID ]. This work received government funding managed by the French National Research Agency under France 2030, reference ANR-22-EXES-0014.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data availability statement

The datasets of the current study will be made available upon publication of this article.

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