Headline-fatigued Americans are tapping out of the news cycle

Thanks to radio, TV, emails, apps, and finally social media, news has never been more within reach. However, constant updates and pervasive push notifications are now causing a growing portion to consciously keep current affairs at arm’s length.

A survey update from Pew Research Center, published Wednesday, found that the overall share of US adults who reported following the news all or most of the time fell to 36% in August 2025 — a significant drop from the 51% recorded in 2016, when the survey first began.

What’s particularly striking is that this trend tracks across all age cohorts, including those typically considered to be the most plugged in. From the Pew data, 30- to 49-year-olds have seen the biggest drop-off from 2016, with 20% fewer respondents in that age group saying that they keep up all or most of the time, while the share of 50- to 64-year-olds saying the same slumped 16% across the nine-year period.

Fellow (dis)associates

“Brain rot” social media consumption that’s often blamed for the increasingly fragmented news landscape — in June, the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report for 2025 noted an “accelerating shift” toward social media and video as “diminishing the influence of ‘institutional journalism’” — is most commonly associated with Gen Z.

And though young adults do follow the news less closely than other age groups, and a growing number of middle-aged Americans are indeed using social media as a news source, the practice of active avoidance might lend just as much insight into the drop-offs as increasing time spent on TikTok or Instagram Reels.

The same Reuters study found that news evasion is at a record high globally, with 40% of respondents saying they sometimes or often avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017 — citing a “negative effect on their mood” and being “worn out by the amount” as top reasons for swerving the headlines.