A new study by the Pew Research Center says that Americans are consuming more news than ever, with continued growth online — 34% said they went online for their news yesterday. When you add mobile, email and social networks to the equation, that number jumps to 44%.
When you break it down, only 7% of Americans say they get their news via social networks. But it’s important to note a couple things. First, most people don’t “get their news” from Facebook per se, but lots of people discover it there, linking off to other news sites to consume it. This form of “social grazing” — you’re not looking for news, but serendipitously running across it — will likely increase in the months and years to come. In fact, the study said the percentage of so-called news grazers has increased nine points (from 48% to 57%) since 2006.
Second, that mobile number is worth watching carefully. Only 8% say they get their news regularly from their mobile devices, but given the explosion of mobile web/app usage, we expect that number to jump dramatically in the near future. Social news consumption is be tailor-made for mobile, as we’ll see with the pending launch of News.me, not as a website, but as an iPad experience. And search is tailor-made for mobile, too — Pew found that 33% of people regularly use search engines to find their news.
So in short, people are consuming more news in more places, and while the social and mobile numbers are still small, we bet they’ll be growing fast in the next 12-24 months.