Study shows young adults hit by ‘news fatigue’

The AP commissioned a team of anthropologists to study news consumption patterns of young adults between the ages of 18 and 34 in Britain, India and the United States. The big finding: young news consumers are overwhelmed with facts and headlines but have trouble digging down on in-depth stories. “Participants in this study almost always consumed news as part of another set of activities and therefore were unable to give their full attention to the news,” reads the summary. “Multitasking prevented participants from becoming completely engaged with a news story and therefore interaction with the news was limited to headlines and news updates.” The AP conducted the study to learn how to increase engagement with younger users. The Telegraph in London, for example, “has adopted the mind-set of a broadcast-news operation to quickly build from headlines to short stories to complete multimedia packages online to boost readership.” Check out the full study results, a New Model for News, right here (.pdf).