This story was written by Teen Vogue's 2024 Student Correspondents, a team of college students and recent graduates covering the election cycle from key battleground states.
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Zikora Akanegbu is many things: She's a student at Cornell University; a voting rights advocate who’s concerned about getting boots on the ground for this year’s presidential election; and a 19-year-old who’s about to cast her vote for president for the first time.
Lately, she also describes herself as someone who is unnerved by the news — uneasy about certain conversations and words that have stayed with her. And, like many people her age, Akanegbu keeps up on the news cycle using apps such as Instagram to access information.
Akanegbu was recently talking to a friend over lunch about Project 2025, a sweeping plan drafted by the conservative Heritage Foundation to restructure the country if Donald Trump were to win back the White House. If enacted as currently written, the project would curtail the rights of minorities and LGBTQ+ people, roll back abortion rights, and gut environmental regulations, among other measures. Tiller worries that the plan would take the country back to the 1800s — but her friend didn’t know much about it, other than that it’s “bad, right?”
Gen Z and millenials are more likely to use social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to obtain their news rather than watching cable or reading articles. While some news-aggregating apps like Apple News collect traditional media articles in one place, younger people are more likely to use their Instagram feed or TikTok's For You Page to get the news of the day.
TikTok, in particular, is a primary source of news for young people, especially in the last few years, growing from 9% of adults 18-29 using it regularly for news in 2020 up to 32% in 2023, according to the Pew Research Center. Some young activists, for example, have flocked to the app amid growing distrust of traditional outlets for their coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
With the 2024 election around the corner, Teen Vogue speaks to students about how they get their news. Some student journalists and activists say they've gotten subscriptions to The New York Times or their hometown paper, and they check out newsletters. They scroll through TikTok, too, of course, but say they’re a bit less trusting of social apps to give them accurate information.
Other young people say they get their news exclusively from social media. Rising freshman Kylie Gilbert, for instance, says she’s avoiding politics with a 10-foot pole. She knows the broad strokes of what’s going on — that there’s an upcoming election and the basics of what each candidate is interested in — but says she’s not actively looking up NPR articles to verify what gets said on TikTok.
With candidates that some perceive as not connecting with them on important issues such as climate change, housing, and a sometimes brutal news cycle, here’s how young people are piecing together what’s going on ahead of November.
Zikora Akanegbu, Cornell University sophomore, studying urban planning for pre-law:
For social media, I follow two accounts, Impact and So Informed (on Instagram). They're the type of accounts that make the infographics to easily explain what's happening in the news. It's really easy to digest the infographics. In addition, there's a lot of people that will post on their Instagram story about the news and what's going on, and then I'll look more into that by searching an article to learn more for myself.
Abraham Garcia-Romero, Berea College junior studying political science and communications in hopes of running for office:
I get all my media through my phone, so on social — social media websites like CNN or The New York Times app. Those are the two main ones I have downloaded. I get some of my news on TikTok. It’s not what you expect; it’s still the national news network — it’ll be MSNBC or The Hill — but they’re on TikTok now. So they post shorter videos, and it’s still news; it just happens to be on TikTok.
Kylie Gilbert, a freshman looking to study nursing at Hofstra University:
The majority [of news I get], I would say, is definitely social media like Instagram, TikTok, all sorts… Another big part is that my dad likes to watch the news, so I get some of it from them. Of course, I feel as for most people my age, their parents or grandparents — their elders like to always discuss [the news] at big events like Thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever.
Pratika Katiyar, Northeastern University senior studying business administration and communication (and a former Teen Vogue contributor):
I get a weekly newsletter from The Boston Globe. Then, I would say, two [other sources for me] would be The New York Times and The Washington Post. Part of it is my school gives me a New York Times subscription for free.
Journalism students and professional journalists go through years of training. Whether they go to J-school or whatever, if they work at that outlet, they go through journalism ethics. They go through how to interview a source properly. There's so much training involved. Sometimes when I see those [social media] accounts I’m like… maybe the way they're presenting the news isn't always accurate, or sometimes they are too quick to report something that isn't fact-checked.
Jonathan Lam, Cornell sophomore studying industrial and labor relations at Cornell University:
I think I continue to read The New York Times and Washington Post because I still have hope in the legitimacy of these news sources…. I think even saying they're spreading misinformation is false in itself. I don't think they're spreading misinformation; I think it's just the wording, and the way their articles [are] upsetting for a lot of people. And I think that's valid.
I know, for the most part, Instagram has been very useful, or especially Twitter. I think what we're seeing right now [with] what's happening in Palestine and Gaza, mainstream media isn't going to cover everything that we need to know about what's happening. So a lot of my friends might even argue that Instagram and Twitter may be the most useful sources because they're not going to be censoring.
Poojasai Kona, co-host of PBS News Student Reporting Labs' On Our Minds: Election 2024 podcast and junior at Frisco High School:
I don’t really see it as a bad thing, but I get a lot of news from social media, like Instagram. I don’t know, but it’s like the first thing I open up…. They post a lot, so that’s the first thing that pops up, like The New York Times. And I use a social media platform called Impact, or Feminist. I usually get my news from there.
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