A lot of significant info has come out of this research. Worth reading. Some excerpts:
"Every three years, we ask at least 1,000 children and teens to complete our online survey. We use quotas for age, location, gender and parental education level to ensure respondents reflect the diversity of today’s young Australians.
Our 2026 survey results show a significant shift in young people’s news engagement, with an overall decline for young people aged 10–16 years*.
Across nearly every indicator, young people are less engaged with news than they were in our previous survey in 2023.
Young people who report following up on news after hearing about something happening in the world fell from 70% to 59%. Those following social media accounts for news fell from 41% to 29%. Checking news websites or apps is down from 38% to 33%...
In the latest survey, for the first time we asked young people about their use of AI to get news.
Already, 28% of children aged 10–12 report they are using an AI tool to ask about news often or sometimes, rising to 41% among teens aged 13–17.
This could be via AI summaries of the news (which are hard to avoid on Google) or by asking AI tools a question. For example, by typing in “what happened in Nepal?”.
This makes Al tools the second most common way young people proactively seek out news. It is also level with news websites or apps and ahead of social media, TV and radio.
This widespread use of AI to get news raises questions about whether young people are being prepared in school for this kind of news engagement, particularly when we know AI can sometimes be wrong or biased."