Social Media Overtakes Television: How Czechs Really Get Their News

Social media has climbed to second place among Czechs' news sources, trailing only television, while the younger generation is increasingly turning to AI chatbots for information. That's according to the large-scale Digital News Report 2026, conducted by the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford together with YouGov among 2,031 adult Czech residents.

Most Czechs show at least some interest in the news — fewer than a fifth of respondents said they were completely indifferent, while 37% reported extremely high or strong interest in news. Interest is lowest among women, less educated and less well-off people, and residents of the Karlovy Vary Region, where interest in news is on average ten percentage points lower than elsewhere in the country. The Vysočina Region leads in news interest. No difference was found between supporters of left- and right-wing views — the only clear pattern is that the more radical a person's views, the more interested they are in news.

Young people losing interest in traditional news

The strongest interest in news is found among the oldest age groups, with interest declining as age decreases. The least engaged group is 25–34-year-olds, while the very youngest respondents partly buck the trend, showing somewhat higher interest and trust. Still, the gap is significant: among people over 65, 93% report at least some interest in news, compared with only about three-quarters among the youngest respondents.

"The information space is oversaturated, with different types of content competing for attention, and young people generally prefer entertainment content from individual digital creators — bloggers — rather than traditional media brands and news organizations," explains media expert Václav Štětka of the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder.

Social media overtaking globally too

It's social media that has risen to second place among Czechs' news sources, behind only television. While this is primarily a young people's domain, 37% of older people also named social media as a news source. Globally, the importance of social media is growing even faster — for the first time this year, it ranked first among all news sources worldwide.

According to the Central European Digital Media Observatory (CEDMO) at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University, 18–24-year-olds rely on social media the most: while older age groups typically check social media for news once a day or less, 40% of the youngest audience does so several times a day.

Among young people, Instagram is the undisputed leader: while around 18% of the population overall gets news from it, among the youngest that figure exceeds half. Facebook remains the most popular social network in Czechia among people over 25 — used by nearly half the population and about a third of young people. YouTube proved to be the most "cross-generational" platform — cited as a news source by roughly a fifth of people in every age group.

TikTok deserves special attention as the most age-segregated network: it's used by every second person in the 18–24 age group (compared to one in seven among the general population), and one in four in that age group considers TikTok a news source. The National Cyber and Information Security Agency has previously warned about the risks posed by TikTok due to personal data collection by ByteDance, a company under Chinese jurisdiction.

CEDMO expert Ivan Ruta Cuker notes that TikTok's algorithms are particularly aggressive in promoting content linked to the incel subculture — men who can't find a partner and tend to blame women for it. There's a silver lining, though: the youngest users trust TikTok as a news source the least, with distrust decreasing with age.

Disinformation no longer targets only pensioners

Experts are noting a shift in strategy among disinformation spreaders: attacks are moving away from elderly pensioners toward economically active, wealthier middle-aged people. "The strategy of targeting disinformation content at the oldest people is gradually losing its once-total dominance," says Jan Jirák of the Institute of Communication Studies and Journalism at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University.

Social networks also split along political and regional lines: TikTok attracts a more left-leaning audience, while X and LinkedIn skew more right-wing. Facebook is used most actively in the Ústí nad Labem Region and least in the Karlovy Vary Region — which, however, leads in Threads usage. Prague is by far the leader in LinkedIn popularity. There are gender differences too: Facebook and Instagram are more popular among women, while X remains an almost exclusively male platform.

AI chatbots as a new news source

Beyond social media, the number of people using AI chatbots as a news source is also growing rapidly. "AI is the fastest-growing digital technology in the world, outpacing the internet, smartphones, and social media in terms of user growth. In some countries, especially in Africa and Asia, the share of people using AI chatbots to consume news already exceeds 20%," notes Václav Štětka.

Czechs who use AI for news most often ask a chatbot to explain context (41%), summarize an article (36%), or rewrite it in simplified form (36%). As with social media, the trend is being driven mainly by young adults aged 18–24.

Science editor Pavel Kasík warns of the main risk: "Artificial intelligence often makes up facts. These models are trained to complete text and are rewarded for hitting the target, but get no reward for admitting they don't know the answer. The result is systems that would rather invent something plausible than admit ignorance."

Václav Štětka adds that AI chatbots are becoming a serious problem for publishers, since they limit their ability to monetize digital content that AI models offer to readers without compensating the original authors.

Source: seznamzpravy.cz