Greece has one of the highest rates of news avoidance in Europe. Not occasional disengagement — but a deep, structural withdrawal from the mainstream information environment. The findings of this research, conducted by DCN Global in collaboration with GenZette and Forum Apulum, lay bare a paradox: Greeks overwhelmingly believe it is important to stay informed, yet more than eight in ten report avoiding the news regularly.
Understanding how and why citizens disengage from news is not a peripheral concern. It sits at the heart of democratic health, public trust, and the future of journalism itself.
The Emotional Toll of Staying Informed
The most striking finding is not about media habits — it is about emotions. For a majority of Greek news consumers, following the news is actively harmful to their psychological state. Sixty-one percent report experiencing stress or anger as a result of news consumption. Forty-five percent describe a broader mental health impact. Twenty percent feel helpless.
These are not abstract complaints. More than half of respondents — 52% — say they have consciously taken a break from news at some point. And of those, a remarkable 87% say their psychological wellbeing improved as a result.
The emotional pattern holds consistently across age groups and genders, though the youngest cohort (17–34) reports the highest levels of anxiety and anger in response to news — 65% in that age group — pointing to a generation that is simultaneously the most likely to use social media for news, and the most emotionally burdened by it.
Who Avoids, and Why It Matters for Democracy
News avoidance is not uniformly distributed. The research identifies several groups with particularly high avoidance patterns:
1) Young adults (17–34) show the highest avoidance intensity, with 20% reporting "very often" avoidance, and preference for social media over traditional outlets that they largely distrust.
2) Left-leaning citizens display the highest avoidance rate by political affiliation (58% high avoidance), linked to scepticism towards mainstream media.
3) Politically unaffiliated respondents show the highest combined avoidance and disengagement profile — 68% have taken a conscious news break, and 34% avoid news entirely due to political polarisation.
4) Women report slightly higher avoidance overall and are more likely to feel emotional distress from news, though the gender gap is relatively narrow.
Political content is the most avoided category, with 27% of respondents naming it as what they most often skip. Social issues (25%) and war or disasters (18%) follow. Critically, political polarisation has a direct behavioural effect: 49% of respondents say they either avoid news entirely or limit their exposure due to polarised content.
The Trust Deficit at the Centre of It All
News avoidance does not happen in a vacuum. It is tightly bound to trust — or its absence. The research reveals a consistent pattern: those who trust media less are more likely to avoid news, and the demographics with the lowest trust are precisely those most likely to disengage.
Older age groups demonstrate a strikingly different pattern: the 65+ cohort reports the highest media trust, the highest daily news consumption (85%), and the lowest avoidance rate (33%). The correlation between trust and engagement is direct and clear. The challenge for the media sector lies in reaching younger citizens who have, often for good reason, withdrawn their confidence.
Perceptions of journalistic integrity compound the picture. Almost half of respondents (46%) believe Greek journalists do not adequately hold political power to account at all — while 39% feel they overstate this role. Only 12% believe journalists exercise the appropriate level of scrutiny. This deeply critical view of press performance helps explain why even citizens who value being informed feel alienated from the institutions designed to inform them.
How Greeks Stay Informed While Avoiding the News
Avoidance does not mean complete disconnection. During periods when they step away from conventional news, Greeks rely on social media (50%) and push notifications or headlines (46%) as their primary alternative information sources. Word of mouth accounts for 17%. Only 14% report getting no information at all.
This points to a shift in the information ecosystem rather than wholesale ignorance. Citizens are not turning away from information — they are reconfiguring how they receive it, preferring ambient, low-intensity exposure over sustained engagement with full news cycles.
Younger age groups lean heavily on social media as their alternative (59% of 17–34 year olds), while older groups place greater weight on headlines and notifications. The picture by political affiliation is also instructive: centre-right respondents show the highest social media reliance during avoidance periods (66%), while politically unaffiliated citizens are more likely to disengage entirely.
What Citizens Actually Want
Perhaps the most actionable finding concerns news format preferences. When asked what would help them re-engage, the answer is clear: 62% of respondents prefer calm, non-sensationalist journalism. This preference is consistent across genders and age groups, rising to 70% among the 55–64 cohort.
Useful or educational news is the second preference (21%), followed by personalised updates (17%) and a fixed, once or twice daily format (13%). The signal from citizens is unambiguous: they want journalism that respects their time, their intelligence, and their emotional limits.
What This Means: Five Imperatives for the Greece's news avoidance numbers are striking, but they are not an anomaly. They are an early and pronounced signal of pressures playing out across European media systems. The findings from this research offer both a warning and a path forward: the public has not lost interest in the world — it has lost patience with how that world is presented to them.
BY DR. NIKOLAOS PANAGIOTOU, DR. ANDREAS PANAGOPOULOS & DR. IOANNA GEORGIA ESKIADI
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the content which reflects the views only of the authors, and the National Agency and Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
