Миллион жителей Нидерландов читает новости только в соцсетях — и лишь 12% им доверяют

More than one million residents of the Netherlands have completely abandoned traditional news sources and get their news exclusively through social media. Yet only 12% of them trust what they read there.

The Scale of the Phenomenon

According to Digital News Report 2026 — an annual study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University — the "social-media-only" news consumer group in the Netherlands has grown from 2% to 7% of the adult population over the past several years. In absolute numbers, this is more than one million people — comparable to the audience of the largest national news outlet in the country. These people have completely excluded traditional media channels from their information diet: they don't visit newspaper and TV channel websites, don't watch news broadcasts on television, don't listen to radio.

Their only source of information about what's happening in the world is the algorithmic feed on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, or messaging apps. Importantly, this isn't just about young people. While young adults make up a disproportionately high share of this group, "social-media-only" users also exist among older populations — people who once read newspapers but gradually shifted to platforms as their primary information space.

The Paradox: Distrust, But No Search for Alternatives

The main anomaly in the study is the sharp disconnect between consumption and trust in the content. Among those who get news only from social media:

• Only 12% trust the information they encounter there
• Most acknowledge regularly seeing false or distorted material
• Despite this, they don't turn to alternative news sources
• Young people under 35 make up a disproportionately high share of this audience
• The fastest-growing format is short video in Reels, Shorts, and TikTok

Researchers explain this pattern through structural dependency: social media has become the default screen for interacting with the world, and news appears there as a side effect of constant platform presence, rather than a conscious information choice. The problem isn't that people prefer social media — it's that many have stopped noticing they have a choice at all.

The European Context

The Netherlands is traditionally considered a country with high media literacy and a developed quality journalism market. Yet the trend manifests here just as clearly as in countries with less mature media environments. This suggests the problem is not cultural but structural — it's built into the very architecture of the platforms themselves. Digital News Report 2026 covers more than 40 countries and documents a similar picture across Western Europe: traditional media audiences are shrinking, overall trust in news is declining, and the proportion of people entirely dependent on platforms is steadily growing.

"Social media fills the vacuum not because they're trusted — but simply because they're everywhere," the report's authors state.

Platform algorithms are optimized for engagement, not information value. News content ends up in the same feed as entertainment and advertising — the boundary between fact and interpretation blurs. It is precisely this environment that generates the phenomenon of "consume without trusting": habit proves stronger than critical judgment.

What This Means

The paradox of low trust coupled with high dependency is a serious challenge for the media market, advertisers, and regulators. Traditional media outlets are losing audiences not only because of competition with platforms, but because a significant portion of people have stopped actively seeking alternatives. The next question: will platforms take responsibility for the quality of information they distribute — or will this remain a problem for journalism, which fewer and fewer people read.

*Meta has been recognized as an extremist organization and is banned in Russia.