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According to a new analysis from the Pew Research Center, fewer Americans than ever are paying regular attention to news and current affairs. Although the current wave of research is part of a panel study conducted in 2022, and things may have changed somewhat given recent events, these data raise a simple fact often overlooked by political analysts: Most Americans are fed up with the news media itself or simply don’t care enough to tune into the regular bad news, violence, corruption, and political divisions that constitute most media coverage these days.

Professional politics and many actions by the government—as covered endlessly by the media—are essentially of little to no interest to large percentages of Americans.

Consider this: From March 2016 to August 2022, the percentage of American adults who reported following the news “all or most of the time” dropped from 51 percent to 38 percent, according to the Pew study. One-third of U.S. adults in 2022 said they follow the news at least “some of the time” while just under three in ten said they pay attention to the news “only now and then” or “hardly at all”.

Declining attention to news spans all age groups but age differences remain stark. As seen in the chart below, around two-thirds of those ages 65 or older say they follow the news “all or most of the time” (down from a high of 81 percent in 2018) compared to less than one-fifth of those ages 18 to 29. The largest declines in news attention over this period were found among working-age and pre-retirement Americans—for example, more than six in ten Americans ages 50-64 paid close attention to the news in 2016 compared to less than half in 2022.

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