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New research: 41% of surveyed Australian teens now get their news from AI

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The way Australians consume news has been changing for the past 30 years, ever since internet use became widespread.

August 31, 2026

by Tanya Notley, Jee Young Lee, Michael Dezuanni, The Conversation

edited by Swati Mestri, reviewed by Andrew Zinin

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41% of surveyed Australian teens now get their news from AI: new research Credit: Towfiqu Barbhuiya/ Pexels

The way Australians consume news has been changing for the past 30 years, ever since internet use became widespread.

Long gone are the days when families routinely shared bits of the newspaper over breakfast or crowded around the 6 o'clock television news at night.

Since 2017, we have been tracking young people's media engagement to understand how they get their news.

This time, we found some young people are bypassing traditional outlets, reducing their use of social media sources and getting their news from artificial intelligence (AI) summaries using platforms such as Google Search and tools like ChatGPT.

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 among young people ages 10–16.

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%. The share checking news websites or apps fell from 38% to 33%.

Across the four surveys since 2017, family has always been the most common and trusted source of news for both children and teenagers.

But as children move into their teenage years, they also turn to other sources.

Social media has become a common source of news for young people since our first survey, rising from 53% in 2017 to 61% in 2020, during the early days of the pandemic.

But this trend has since reversed, falling to 41% in 2026. The latest decline is likely to be linked in part to the social media ban. This became law in December 2025, two months before our survey was in the field.

In the latest survey, for the first time, we asked young people about their use of AI to get news.

Already, 28% of children ages 10–12 report using an AI tool to ask about news often or sometimes, rising to 41% among teens ages 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, they may type, "what happened in Nepal?"

This makes AI tools the second most common way young people proactively seek out news. It is also on par 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.

Encouragingly, more than half (61%) of young people discussed a news story in school in the past year often or sometimes. However, only around a quarter (26%) learned how to write or produce their own news stories.

Through the process of making their own news stories, students can learn about key elements of high-quality news: fact-checking, fair representation and the right of reply.

Students can also learn how the news can intersect with their own interests and how they can have a voice in their communities.

Decades of research tell us news engagement and civic engagement are closely entwined: When people feel informed about social issues and events, they are more likely to respond and take action.

Our survey findings reflect this. For example, 80% of young people who are highly engaged with news report working with others to address local problems, compared with only 43% of those who have low engagement with news. They are also much more likely to become involved in a cause and volunteer.

Children and young people have as much right to be informed about their communities and societies as anyone else. It's also important for our democracy that young people's voices are heard by adults on the issues that affect them.

To address this, families can support discussion of news in the home, and news providers can increase the representation of young people in the news.

Meanwhile, schools can draw attention to the importance of news and provide opportunities for young people to engage with and produce their own news. Schools can also support discussions about the benefits and risks of different forms of news, including news generated by AI.

Swati Mestri holds a bachelor's degree in Electronics Engineering and has worked as a content editor since 2019. She has experience editing research documents across technology, health care, and materials science, and has a particular interest in technology and space. Full profile →

Master's in physics with research experience. Long-time science news enthusiast. Plays key role in Science X's editorial success. Full profile →

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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