The Dynamics of Political Interest and News Media Avoidance: A Generational and Longitudinal Perspective

Despite the abundance of political information in today's media environment, an increasing number of people tune out from the news. Scholars have traced these developments to both individual motivational factors gaining importance in the high-choice media environment and generational differences related to changing news habits and changing norms around news consumption. However, research that integrates these perspectives is scarce, and studies investigating this relationship longitudinally are especially rare. Thus, this paper investigates the conditional effects of (1) political interest and (2) age on the probability of avoiding traditional news media, and (3) whether these conditional effects have changed over time. Using data from 1986 to 2021, this study shows that the number of people tuning out from news media is increasing. The effect of political interest and age on the probability of news media avoidance has also increased over time. Additionally, there were only small age differences in the impact of political interest in earlier periods, but these differences have increased over time. Today, being uninterested in politics is clearly a stronger predictor of news media avoidance among younger people compared to older individuals.