I recently contributed expert commentary to a piece by Radio New Zealand (RNZ) exploring how young people engage with news in today’s digital environment: „Anxious, desensitised: How teens learn about news now“. Read here.

The article highlights how teenagers increasingly encounter news through social media rather than traditional outlets, often experiencing global events “up close and in isolation”. This shift raises important questions about emotional responses, exposure to distressing content, and how young people make sense of information online.

In my commentary, I reflect on what this means for how we understand news consumption among younger audiences today compared to how previous generations of teenagers consumed the news and what the potential consequences could be.