1 in 4 Australians Get Most of Their News From Social Media Despite Deep Distrust: Study

While publishers globally struggle to sell subscriptions, Australians are more willing to pay for online news content.

A 13-year-old boy poses at his home as he looks at social media on his mobile phone in Sydney, Australia on Dec. 8, 2025. Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images

The number of Australians relying on social media as their main source of news has risen marginally, but large numbers distrust the major platforms, the 2026 Digital News Report reveals.

One in four (26 percent) of over 2,000 surveyed in the University of Canberra’s annual study say social media is their main source of news, overtaking online news websites (23 percent) for the first time.

But at the same time, 57 percent distrust online influencers and personalities, seeing them as a major threat of misinformation, and even higher numbers distrust Facebook and TikTok (59 and 57 percent, respectively).

Australians’ concern about influencers driving misinformation is the highest globally.

The Elon Musk-owned X scored 49 percent distrust, with Instagram on 42 percent, and YouTube rated best at 35 percent.

Overall, misinformation is of concern to 74 percent of Australians—the highest globally, just ahead of the United States. This worry has particularly increased among those aged under 35 (78 percent, up 4 on last year).

When people suspect they’ve encountered misinformation, 39 percent turn to trusted news brands to check the truthfulness of the information. And while publishers globally struggle to sell subscriptions, Australia has one of the highest levels of payment, with 22 percent of people spending money for online news content, up one percent on last year, only behind Sweden and Norway.

Among under 35-year-olds, Australia had the highest proportion of online news payers in the world ahead of Japan, Switzerland, France, and the United States.

This year, the study asked people how trust in news could be improved, with more facts and accuracy (26 percent), less bias and opinion (24 percent), and more breadth and depth in reporting (17 percent) being mentioned most often.

Government moves to regulate social media platforms proved popular, with a third of respondents saying they are not removing enough content compared with 21 percent who think it’s too much.

The study’s authors (pdf) say this suggests “an appetite for intervention to make the online environment safer.”

However, 32 percent of consumers who identified as “right-wing” believe too much content is being taken down compared to 18 percent of those who said they were left-wing.

Only 24 percent of Australians say they have received news literacy education, with that group reporting higher trust in news (53 percent) than those without (41 percent). They are also three times more likely to pay for news (45 percent) than those without (15 percent).

Despite the widespread closures of local newspapers, interest in local news has risen to 51 percent (up 6 since 2020), with a quarter of respondents turning to social media to find it.

In this category, stories about crime and accidents are the most popular (54 percent), followed by local information such as bus timetables and weather (41 percent) and local things to do (36 percent).

And people still put their faith in news that’s produced by other people. While a third of people think AI news is more up-to-date, 43 percent believe it is less trustworthy, 38 percent say it is less accurate, and 37 percent rate it as less transparent than human-produced news.