How Millennials get news: Paying for content

Despite growing up amid abundant free online entertainment and news, today’s young adults still use significant amounts of paid content. Selling news to young people remains difficult, but the data from a new study finds reasons for optimism and suggests new ways to think about the challenge. The vast majority of the Millennial Generation, those Americans age 18 to 34, regularly use paid content for entertainment or news, whether they personally pay for the subscriptions and other forms of paid content themselves or someone else pays the bill, according to a new report on Millennials’ news habits. While use of paid entertainment content, including music, movies, television, and video games, is most common among Millennials, 53 percent report regularly using paid news content — in print, digital, or combined formats — in the last year. Furthermore, 40 percent of Millennials personally paid for news products or services out of their own pockets. Millennials over age 21, those most likely to be on their own or out of school, are twice as likely as those age 18-21 to personally pay for news (more than 4 in 10 vs. 2 in 10). A younger adult’s willingness to pay for news is correlated with his or her broader beliefs about the value of news. The people who want to stay connected with the world, who are interested in news, and who are more engaged with news on social networks are the most likely to be willing to personally pay for news. That “news orientation” is the biggest driver of a person’s willingness to pay for news, more so than a person’s age or socioeconomic status

How Millennials get news: Inside the habits of America’s first digital generation

For years, researchers and social critics have worried that the newest generation of American adults is less interested in news than those who grew up in the pre-digital age. Social media and mobile play a large role in Millennial news consumption. 94% of those surveyed own smartphones. The average Millennial gets 74% of her news from online sources. Much of the concern has come from data that suggest adults age 18-34 — so-called Millennials — do not visit news sites, read print newspapers, watch television news, or seek out news in great numbers. This generation, instead, spends more time on social networks, often on mobile devices. The worry is that Millennials’ awareness of the world, as a result, is narrow, their discovery of events is incidental and passive, and that news is just one of many random elements in a social feed. A new comprehensive study that looks closely at how people learn about the world on these different devices and platforms finds that this newest generation of American adults is anything but “newsless,” passive, or civically uninterested. Millennials consume news and information in strikingly different ways than previous generations, and their paths to discovery are more nuanced and varied than some may have imagined, according to the new study by the Media Insight Project, a collaboration of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

Treatment and outcomes of patients presenting to an adult emergency department involuntarily with substance misuse

Alcohol and other drug (AOD) use is common in our society. The use of these substances flow throughout all areas of healthcare, and is especially prevalent in patients presenting to the emergency department with signs of mental illness. At the extreme end of these presentations patients present involuntarily with either police or ambulance officers. The aim of this study was to identify and describe the population presenting to the ED involuntarily with and without substance misuse as a precipitating factor. Quantitative descriptive analysis was used to describe this population between April and June 2015. In patients presenting to one large inner city emergency department involuntarily, 30% had alcohol or other drug misuse as a precipitating factor. Patients who involuntarily presented with alcohol and other misuse stay longer in the emergency department then others that do not have alcohol or other drug misuse. These patients represent frequently, with over 50% representing at 90 days however this was not associated with alcohol or other drug misuse. Almost all patients who present involuntarily are discharged home post review by a mental health team. Significant improvements in care can be made in this population if the opportunistic treatment of both mental illness and AOD misuse is completed in the emergency department.</p