News used to land with a thump on doorsteps, bundled in stacks and inked with headlines editors deemed most important. Front pages led with city council decisions, international conflicts and investigative exposés. Readers flipped pages, not feeds.
Today, the news doesn’t arrive. It appears between dance videos and hot takes, sorted not by public value but by algorithms designed to keep users scrolling. Social media, podcasts and newsletters have replaced daily papers and nightly broadcasts as primary sources of information for many young adults.
The shift from traditional journalism to algorithm-driven news feeds has transformed not just how people consume the news but also how they perceive it. What audiences see, and what they miss, is increasingly filtered through engagement-based platforms.
While this digital-first approach brings speed and accessibility, it also raises concerns about bias, misinformation and a fractured sense of shared reality.
In the pre-digital era, newsrooms and editors acted as gatekeepers, prioritizing stories based on civic value. Stories made the front page because they mattered, not because they performed well in engagement metrics.
“People once traditionally used to go to the newspaper, then to a website, and now, largely, I think the research shows that most people get their news from a social media feed,” Joel Campbell, a Brigham Young University communications professor, said.
BYU Professor Ed Carter wrote in his article “Truth Is the Only Ground,” that “social media are not Holmes’s marketplace of ideas. The stream of information we receive...is controlled by algorithms that attempt to maximize our attention rather than give us high-value information.”
According to 2024 Pew Research Center study, 39% of adults under 30 regularly get news from TikTok, up from just 9% in 2020. Trust in social media for news has also nearly matched trust in national outlets for that age group.
Campbell said the shift comes with trade-offs.
“It’s not like looking through the newspaper, and it just pops out whatever serendipity gives you," Campbell said. "Now there’s something behind what’s going on, and that may, in fact, create echo chambers.”
Echo chambers are digital environments where individuals are primarily exposed to information that aligns with their existing beliefs, often limiting exposure to diverse or opposing viewpoints.
Natalie Mejia, a psychology student at BYU, said she has noticed the effect.
“The more that I read, I think it’s been easier to tell what kinds of things give a more accurate representation of what actually happened," Mejia said. "I definitely think what I see is more aimed toward me now, and a lot of the things that I see just tend to be kind of the same thing.”
Kristoffer Boyle, a BYU professor and former journalist, said the shift to digital has enabled more timely reporting and opened the door for deeper dives.
“If I cover a fire at 10 a.m., within 15 minutes I can have something online and then continue to add to that story, and we have the ability to cover news as it happens and provide information throughout the course of an event,” Boyle said.
Stories that may have once been cut for space in print editions now live online indefinitely. Boyle said the shift has encouraged newsrooms and student journalists to explore different ways of reaching readers.
“We have to think about different ways to tell our stories. Not that the stories don’t matter anymore, they just have to be told in different ways,” Boyle said.
Still, the digital shift brings challenges.
"There's a lot more competition and a lot more voices out there, a lot more noise," Boyle said. "We have to be able to filter through the noise. We didn't have to use to do that.”
That noise isn’t just about quantity, it’s about predictability.
Algorithmic news feeds tend to prioritize content similar to what users already engage with, limiting exposure to different viewpoints.
Mejia shared that she has experienced that firsthand.
“It’s not that I don’t want to see other perspectives, it’s just that they don’t show up unless I go looking,” she said.
Campbell said these patterns go beyond convenience and can influence trust in journalism itself.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people now believe that all journalism is biased,” Campbell said. “I still believe that good journalism and good journalists can create stories that are balanced and go out of their way to get all points of view."
A Gallup/Knight Foundation study found that while many young adults get news from social media, they also report low levels of trust in that content. About 37% of Americans ages 18-29 regularly get news from influencers, adding another layer of complexity.
“The problem isn’t that there aren’t good sources. It’s that we’re not always equipped to tell the difference,” Campbell said.
Increasing media literacy is one of the most important steps forward.
“If you’re feeling kind of an emotional response to this headline, then maybe back off and look for a different source that tries not to poke you and make you emotional immediately when you read it,” Campbell said.
He emphasized the need for audiences to pause and verify rather than react impulsively.
Mejia said she tries to be more intentional about how she consumes news.
“Even if I’m still using social media, I at least want to know what I’m not seeing,” she said.
News today moves faster and reaches farther than ever before. But with so much information packed into every scroll, it’s easy to miss what matters most.
Whether watching a headline flash by on TikTok or reading a post from a favorite influencer, the responsibility to slow down and verify rests with everyone.
Journalism still has the power to inform, connect and inspire — but only if people are willing to stop, ask questions and seek the full story.