News consumption habits are undergoing a fundamental transformation, as audiences increasingly shift from reading articles to watching video-based content — a trend that is no longer limited to South Korea, but is also taking hold across the United States and Europe.
A newly released nationwide survey from the Korea Press Foundation highlights how rapidly this transition is unfolding. According to the foundation’s 2025 Media Audience Survey, the share of adults who accessed news through online video platforms rose sharply to 30 percent in 2025, up from 18.4 percent just a year earlier.
YouTube Emerges as the Primary News Gateway
The report shows that YouTube overwhelmingly dominates video-based news consumption, accounting for more than 90 percent of all news accessed via online video platforms. Researchers say the platform’s mix of short clips, live streams, and commentary-driven formats has made it a central destination for audiences seeking quick and visually engaging news updates.
By contrast, traditional internet portals — long considered the backbone of digital news distribution in South Korea — continued their gradual decline. About 66.5 percent of respondents said they had used portal-based news in the previous week, marking the lowest level since tracking began in 2017. Portal usage peaked in 2021 and has fallen steadily since.
A Global Shift Beyond South Korea
Media analysts note that this pattern mirrors developments seen in the United States and Europe, where younger audiences increasingly favor video-first platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and streaming-based news formats over text-heavy websites. Short-form video news, in particular, is becoming a dominant entry point to current events across multiple regions.
In South Korea, usage of short-form video news more than doubled over the past year, climbing from 11.1 percent to 22.9 percent. Similar growth trends have been reported by Western media research groups, reinforcing the idea that the shift reflects a broader global change rather than a country-specific phenomenon.
Television Sees a Surprising Comeback
While digital video continues to expand, traditional television news also showed renewed strength. Weekly TV news consumption rebounded to 81.4 percent in 2025, up from 72.2 percent the previous year, reversing a four-year decline. Researchers attribute the rebound to heightened public interest during major political events, including impeachment proceedings and snap elections.
Print Journalism Hits Historic Lows
Print newspapers, however, continued their long-term decline. Only 8.4 percent of respondents reported reading a print newspaper — including PDF editions — in the previous week, the lowest figure ever recorded in the survey.
The drop was most pronounced among younger audiences. Readership among people in their 20s fell to 3.1 percent, while those in their 30s dropped to 4.2 percent. Even older readers showed signs of disengagement, with newspaper use among people in their 50s falling sharply year over year.
Average daily reading time for print newspapers also declined to 28.5 minutes, marking the first decrease in four years.
Watching News Replaces Reading It
Despite concerns about declining print readership, overall news consumption rebounded last year, driven almost entirely by video-based formats. The report concludes that audiences are not abandoning news itself — they are changing how they consume it.
“The transition from ‘reading news’ to ‘watching news’ is clearly accelerating,” the survey’s authors said, noting that visual storytelling, commentary, and algorithm-driven discovery are reshaping the media landscape.
Trust, AI, and Ongoing Challenges
Use of generative artificial intelligence as a direct news source remained limited, at 2.1 percent, though researchers suggested its influence could grow in the coming years. Public trust in news rose modestly to 49 percent, but younger audiences expressed lower confidence than older respondents.
Participants cited sensational headlines, repetitive click-driven stories, and perceived political bias as the most serious problems facing today’s news media — concerns echoed by audiences in Western markets as well.
As video platforms continue to reshape how people encounter information, media organizations worldwide face mounting pressure to adapt their storytelling formats while maintaining credibility in an increasingly competitive digital environment.
