Survey: Overwhelming majority of Latinos get news on digital devices
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A woman looks on her smart phone while ridiing on Miami-Dade Metrobus public transportation. Photo: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Nearly 9 in 10 Latinos (87%) say they get news from digital devices at least sometimes, and 65% say they prefer this form of news over TV, radio, or print, a new survey finds.
Why it matters: The dramatic shift to digital news consumption by Latinos comes amid rising concerns over online misinformation and the use of generative AI and deepfakes, especially during this year's election.
Zoom in: The Pew Research Center's 2023 National Survey of Latinos on media released Tuesday found that Latinos are much more likely than white Americans (55%) and Black Americans (50%) to prefer getting news from digital devices.
- Latinos also are more likely than white and Black adults to get news from social media, mainly because Latino adults tend to be younger than other groups.
- Nearly three-quarters of Latino adults under 50 (73%) prefer to get their news on digital devices, including 27% who prefer social media specifically.
State of play: In recent decades, digital devices have become an increasingly common source of news among Latinos and Americans overall as consumers shift to digital platforms and a majority of people have smartphones.
- The percentage of Latinos in households without a smartphone is lower than it is for white and Black Americans and for Native Americans, an analysis of data from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found.
Zoom out: The survey also found that 22% of Latino adults say they follow the news all or most of the time, while an additional 36% follow the news some of the time.
- The share of Latinos who follow the news all or most of the time has fluctuated in recent years but has dropped by nine percentage points between 2020 (31%) and 2023 (22%), similar to a pattern seen across the general U.S. public.
- News avoidance has been rising globally as some users shun distressing stories about climate change, war and global inequities, according to a 2022 news engagement analysis from Axios' Sara Fischer writes.
- Yet, engagement with topics that help users escape real-world problems — like sports, true crime, and entertainment — continues to climb.
Methodology: The Pew Research Center's 2023 National Survey of Latinos of 5,078 U.S. Hispanic adults was conducted Nov. 6-19, 2023. This includes 1,524 Hispanic adults on Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel (ATP) and 3,554 Hispanic adults on Ipsos' KnowledgePanel®.
- The margin of sampling error is +/- 2.0 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample.
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