2026英国成年人媒介使用行为与态度报告 (英文版)

Published 2 April 2026 Welsh language summary available Contents Section Foreword ................................................................................................................................ 3Key findings............................................................................................................................. 5Artificial intelligence ............................................................................................................... 9Trust in news and information .............................................................................................. 14Personal data use and online security................................................................................... 19 Foreword In many debates about the social, political and economic future of the UK, there is an increasingemphasis on the importance of media literacy. This is for a range of reasons, including promoting theintegrity of information, protecting against scams, minimising risk and harm, and encouraging ‘Media literacy’ can be defined in many ways. Our definition of media literacy is deliberately broad,so that it remains relevant in the context of ongoing rapid technological change: ‘the ability to use, understand and create media and communications across multiple formats and Ofcom has had statutory duties to promote and research media literacy since it was established in2003. These duties were further clarified by the Online Safety Act 2023. In 2024 Ofcom published its first3-year media literacy strategy, setting out three central pillars in itsprogramme: Research, Evidence and Evaluation; Engaging Platforms; and People and Partnerships. Our long-running tracking projects are a foundational aspect of this work, sitting within the researchpillar. We have been surveying the UK population - both adults and children - since 2005, asking a Over this period, we have needed to update our methodology and questionnaires, and this year’sreport marks a new methodology. We have returned to a single survey in order to be able toconduct more analysis across different questions, exploring what drives different aspects of media Our sample size this year (7,533 UK adults) enables us to analyse our dataset by a range of groups. Inthis report we focus on reporting differences mainly by age and socio-economic group and later thisyear we will publish further analysis focussing on differences by Nation, gender, and minority ethnic Our research this year tells a number of stories, including around the rapid growth of artificialintelligence (AI), and how its adoption aligns closely with broader digital engagement, meaning thatdigital divides could become further entrenched without further action. We also note how, while AI The data also reveals stories about trust in news more widely, showing how people are using moreinformal ways of deciding what to trust, such as comments from other users. There are alsocontinuing questions around trust when it comes to ‘mainstream’ media sources, with one in five And the research includes stories about personal data, and scams, and how confident people are inspotting potential fraud. We note how younger people can be over-confident, and less able toidentify scams in the scenarios we provide. We also note that recognition of fake material tends tostem from textual cues, while those that believe the material is true tend to base their view on visual In our analysis, we explore the drivers for some types of media literacy, and see that breadth ofonline engagement, and confidence in particular skills, are correlated with more reliable criticaljudgement. The implications of this may lead to there being value in encouraging narrow users to do However, we also see in our data that there has been a reduction in the proportion of people thatsay they use ‘lots’ of new websites/apps. There is also a reduction in perceptions of positivity about This range of attitudes indicates perhaps more uncertainty from people about the role of theinternet in their lives. For the first time this year we asked a question on how people feel about theamount of time they spend on screens - four in ten say their screen time is too high most days. The findings in this report help us prioritise our own activity and provide context and underpinningfor our work with grassroots organisations and corporates, and policymakers across the UK, as wellas our continued focus on how platform design can mitigate some of the challenges that users face Key findings This report presents the findings from Ofcom’s Adults’ Media Literacy Tracker, supplemented byinsights from our qualitative study, Adults Media Lives. Together, these sources document theextent and range of adults’ media literacy in the UK, capturing how people use, understand andnavigate media and digital technologies, both online and across other parts of their everyday More adults are using AI compared to last year, yet scepticism