University of North Florida students are navigating the media landscape as they manage staying informed, news fatigue, misinformation and short-form content.
The media landscape has changed noticeably over the last decade. One of the major differences is how people get their news. According to Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, traditional news media are struggling against alternative media.
According to a 2018 study conducted by Brodeur Partners, only 17% of Gen Z identified newspapers and magazines as their first or second most important news sources. Long-form video content is also less popular, with only 32% of TikTok users and 19% of Instagram users favoring it, according to Sprout Social.
Studies point towards short-form content, videos under 60 seconds, being a significant news and entertainment source for media consumers. According to Sprout Social, short-form content is preferred by 60% of TikTok users, 52% of Instagram users and 48% of Facebook users.
It’s not just new outlets feeling this shift. According to a 2025 HubSpot Research report, marketers plan to capitalize on this trend, with 75% saying they plan to maintain or increase their investment in short-form content.
Impact on students
Some Students at UNF are trying to balance consuming the news with combating news fatigue, though they are split on the impact short-form content has on this balance.
Rhianna Kass, a UNF student who likes to stay updated on hockey and psychology news, believes that short-form content directly contributes to their news fatigue and goes out of her way to consume long-form content as well.
“I go to CNN, and I also go on Instagram and social media, but I also know ‘don’t trust social media that much,’” said Kass. “You want to get from different sources, like different news networks, like New York Times, CNN.”
Kass said that part of why she watches and reads the news is because she has lost trust in social media influencers over time.
“I’ve been going to more mainstream sources like news networks more often…when I was younger, maybe 12 or that age, I would go to social media because you know you’re 12, everybody is on social media, but as you get older, you start to realize people are liars, this is fake…,” said Kass.
Kass’s comment reflects a growing concern with the reliability of this media. According to the Reuters Institute, 73% of respondents in the United States are concerned about their ability to tell what is true and what is false in online news
“When it comes to underlying sources of false or misleading information, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest threat worldwide (47%), along with national politicians (47%),” said the Reuters Institute.
UNF students like Jonathan Bailey, who likes to stay up to date on relevant topics, said that while he takes information from social media “with a grain of salt,” he doesn’t think that it contributes to his news fatigue and that modern long-form content also suffers from the same reputability issue.
Bailey said that while he believes long-form content will continue to grow, many people would be willing to consume more long-form content if they had the time.
“It’s really easy to just assume that our generation will only watch short-form content, when the reality is many of us would prefer long-form content and we don’t mind consuming it when we have the time to do so,” said Bailey.
Giovanni Riveiro, who is interested in current international conflicts and gas prices, said that while he gets some information from social media, he uses Ground News to verify the political biases of sources and to find independent reports.
Nathan Coleman, a UNF student interested in politics and sports and Riveiro’s friend, said he gets most of his sports news from ESPN.
Riveiro said that while the news and social media can be overwhelming, it helps him to remember that everyone on social media is a real person, no matter how influential they are.
“You’re a human, [Coleman’s] a human, everybody around me is a human,” said Riveiro. “They can have a billion followers, doesn’t make a difference. [Coleman] could have a million followers, doesn’t make a difference. We’re all the same.”
Riveiro also said that part of how short-form content contributes to news fatigue is by lowering people’s attention spans, and that all you can do to combat it is “eliminate it.”
According to a 2024 study using EEG results, researchers found that addiction to short-form content does negatively affect attention spans.
“We found a significant negative correlation between short video addiction tendency and neural oscillation index reflecting the executive control network in the frontal area. This finding suggests that a higher propensity for short video addiction may impair executive control,” reads the study’s conclusion.
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