Social media are the main source of news.

The report by Reuters Institute explains the increased use of social media for news despite online news platforms. TikTok is growing, Facebook is declining, and the young audience has more trust in influencers and celebrities than journalists.

The "Digital News Report 2023" is based on a YouGov survey of over 93,000 online news consumers in 46 markets covering half of the world's population.

The research inquires about the role of information and newspapers. Those are supplanted by social media which are the main source of news. The trend depends on the young audience. Youngers are born and grow with social media, and they trust more influencers, celebrities, and social media personalities than journalists. They use Tik Tok (it reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news), Instagram, and Snapchat to access news.

Facebook and Twitter users, contrarily, follow and trust more journalists. Of course, this is a matter of age.

Another interesting data is the skepticism towards the algorithm. Less than one-third of users think the selection of the news is a good way to be informed.