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Online has for the first time overtaken television in an annual survey of the UK’s news habits.

Research by the broadcast regulator Ofcom reveals 71 per cent of the population said they used online services for news versus 70 per cent who watch TV news bulletins.

Over the last year, online sources grew from 68 per cent to 71 per cent, while social media also saw a rise from 47 per cent to 52 per cent. For people aged between 16 and 24, the number saying they use social media for news was 82 per cent.

The most commonly mentioned online news sources were Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Facebook report

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, was the second biggest news source in the survey with 40 per cent saying they used it for news.

The BBC remains the biggest single source, with 68 per cent of people saying they turn to it for news. However, this is a survey of what people say they do – analysis based on actual usage can paint a different picture, showing for instance that BBC News reaches 75 per cent of the UK population on an average week.

The biggest falls in the survey were for traditional news providers. Newspapers and their websites saw the number of people saying they used them drop from 39 per cent to 34 per cent. TV news fell from 75 per cent to 70 per cent. BBC News online also fell from 22 per cent to 18 per cent.

The survey, however, does not measure usage of specific sites. The BBC (1.2 billion visits) and CNN (710 million visits) are the two largest news websites in the world, according to the UK Press Gazette’s most recent monthly survey. Both saw significant increases in traffic over the last year.

Youtube not mentioned

The source that saw the biggest increase is YouTube. 19 per cent of those surveyed say they used it for news. In 2023, it was just seven per cent. However, last year YouTube was not mentioned by name and was just referred to as “other online”, which Ofcom says probably accounts for the large rise.

Other sources such as the Guardian (10 per cent) and the Daily Mail (14 per cent), which have both a large online presence as well as a print newspaper, had similar figures to last year. The largest UK newspaper website was the Guardian with 365 million visits in July 2024.

However, traditional newspapers saw a big decline, with even those over 55 saying they read a print newspaper dropping from 38 per cent to 32 per cent in just a year.

Nevertheless, the most mentioned single news source in the survey remains BBC One. TV as a whole maybe in decline but 43 per cent of those surveyed said they turned to BBC One for news, 13 per cent ahead of its nearest rivals, ITV and Facebook, both on 30 per cent.