There was once a time that families, and especially adults, would sit down each evening, turn on the television, and find out the news of the day from a national broadcast, hearing from a professional and highly curated selection of stories that fit neatly in the timed segment. There was a time when that news was at least mostly trusted by audiences and helped to inform decisions about the world.
That time seems like a bedtime story made up by parents to entertain their children.
The world simply isn't this way anymore. In fact, it's several generations removed from that simple scene. Today, what would be considered the more "traditional" news is a handful of corporations with news channels running at full speed, 24 hours a day, and seemingly charged with at least some political leaning. The CNNs and Fox News of the world are shouting louder and louder to get our attention, and they are doing so for a very important reason: fewer people, and especially Gen Z, are giving them the time of day. Why is this happening, and what is taking the place of traditional news?
Traditional News and the Fall from Grace
While there are likely many reasons for this mass exodus from the traditional media powerhouses, there are a few key drivers for this behavior. The first reason is the rise of social media and its ability to provide a wealth of news from countless sources. A Pew Research study showed that over half of all adults, and significantly more within Gen Z, are getting their news at least in part from social media. The trend indicates that younger generations consider social media a stronger draw for their daily news source. Why is this happening?
For one thing, social media is so easy to consume. Even for older generations, being able to scroll through social media is much more convenient than being at home in a room with a TV. And because news stories slowly adapt to what users are attracted to, the algorithm begins to feed users the type of news they are most interested in, something that traditional news networks simply can't compete with.
There is more to the story, however. For Gen Z, the traditional news apparatus has been broken. The thought of an unbiased news organization simply doesn't exist in the way society once perceived it. What has ramped up this issue is twofold: first, the use of "fake news" thrown out to describe anything that is distasteful to leading figures, and repeating it so often the idea of "fake news" began to normalize; and second, the reality that there are outlets on both sides that lean so hard that nearly any news story reported is filled with mis- and dis-information, based on snippets of facts and then spun out to fit a specific narrative. Gen Z has had enough. They are searching for objective truth, and social media is at least one place to start, but it isn't perfect.
Prediction Markets and the Search for Truth
The use of prediction markets to search for unbiased news is rising at an impressive rate. As easy as social media can be to consume news bites, it has a major trust issue as well. It contains layers upon layers of its own bias in the form of the many creators who provide the news, their own personal views included, plus the algorithm itself, which can stealthily turn your feed into an echo chamber without your knowledge.
Prediction markets like Polymarket, Myriad, and others share the strengths of social media in that they can be easy to find and absorb. However, their popularity is driven by one simple fact: their motivation is overtly tied to money, but that money is earned when it matches the truth. This was made clear during election time, when people flocked to prediction markets to get a sense of election outcomes and what would likely happen. When sources are rewarded when they correctly predict the truth, the desire for hidden motives becomes a non-issue.
Gen Z sees this, but they also get to exercise their ability to interact, something that has become fundamental to how they participate in the digital world. Instead of being a consumer of the news, they take part in the discussion and feel that connection to a larger community, all searching for truth while sharing their opinions and questions about it. Prediction markets may soon become the primary source of news for Gen Z, and it's easy to understand why.
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