Facebook moms and Twitter dads are both notable for believing the most obscene and obviously untrue news posted on their respective forums. However, there’s a possibility that our generation may be heading in that same direction. What’s the cause? The increasing percentage of people receiving their news via social media.
According to a 2025 study conducted by Pew Research Center, 56% of American adults often receive news through digital devices, with 93% of adults ages 18-29 being the lead demographic. It’s no surprise that in the age of smart devices, people prefer to consume their news in the most convenient way possible — through mobile apps.
Having an app like NPR or the New York Times on your phone is a great way to find reliable information on current events. But for people our age, it’s hard for legacy media to compete with people on social media reporting the same news in a shorter, more entertaining format.
Take TikTok, for instance. Young adults on TikTok, aged 18-29, were surveyed to regularly receive their news through the app at a rate of 43%, up from 9% in 2020. While TikTok has recently implemented updates in place to combat misinformation, including AI moderation technologies, the app still has approximately 1.59 billion users as of early 2025, which makes it extremely difficult to take down every piece of misinformation that is shared.
Now, this is not to completely discredit these apps, but rather to encourage you to focus more on receiving your news through primary or even reliable secondary news sources. Social media is not all bad; you just need to know how to navigate it and be careful in what you trust.
Social media apps can be useful for disseminating primary sources, or first-account news events. A video of a protest or a military operation coming from an official news account such as CNN is the best type of news to consume on these apps: real-life, undoctored first-hand accounts. Secondary news sources on social media, such as a TikToker commenting on events in the news, is where it gets a little complicated.
Personally, I trust the opinion of an author who has a long history in news writing and an understanding of political and worldwide events much more than I trust an influencer desperate for likes. Unlike many 30-second videos on Instagram, a Wall Street Journal column goes through extensive editing and fact checking.
Ultimately, nothing can stop us from receiving our news on social media. I, too, have found my fair share of breaking news through TikTok. However, it is more important now than ever before that you do your own research and fact check. We are constantly being bombarded in the media with accounts of current events that never seem to align with each other — not to mention the amount of AI that is being put out and becoming even harder to distinguish from reality.
The only way to not be a victim of misinformation is to go beyond watching a bite-sized clip and find the facts. Once you can ensure that you have all the necessary information, then you can form your own well-thought out and original opinion. And hopefully, by becoming well informed, we can stop our generation from becoming the gullible, easy to fool Facebook parents.
