A report from the Reuters Institute and the University of Canberra looking into digital news consumption has found that Generation Z, people aged 24 and below, in Australia had the lowest interest in hard news at 35 per cent.

They were followed by Generation Y at 49 per cent, Generation X at 47 per cent, and Baby Boomers at 57 per cent.

Emmanuel College head of English Catherine Ryan said the trend had been noticed in some of her VCE classes.

"It is a bit of a problem," Ms Ryan said.

"There is very little interest in anything that would classify as hard news.

"If they do look at any kind of news, it's sports or celebrity related."

Ms Ryan said she introduced extra activities to get her students engaged with more news and current affairs including a weekly news quiz.

"It's a bit of fun, I chuck in a couple of footy related questions or a celebrity question, but it's also questions about what is happening in Ukraine, questions about world leaders and things like that," she said.

"They actually love it. Kids actually end up paying attention and making sure, on a day that they know there's going to be a quiz, that they'll listen to the radio on the way to school, or catch the news.

"I also ask them to go home and look at newspapers online or hard copy, find an issue that interests them, and they bring that in to talk about it in class."

She said she thought it was important to encourage her students to engage in hard news to be better informed about events like elections.

"Some of them voted for the first time this year," she said.

"[They've] got to have an awareness of what's happening in the world, and how it impacts [them].

"They might not all become big news consumers, but at least they have some awareness."

Meanwhile, Warrnambool College VCE media teacher Rebecca Grey said she did not see much of a decline in her students' news consumption but rather a "change in the way that they consume media".

"It's not necessarily the way that we consumed media five or 10 years ago, but they're still engaging in what's happening in the world," she said.

"They're very aware of events like climate change and what's happening in government in Australia, but also around the world.

"It's just being consumed in different ways."

IN OTHER NEWS:

Ms Grey said her students were becoming more aware of media bias which she attributed to their loss of trust in some news, but stressed it was not a complete insufficiency given the amount of news available to them.

"We've gone from having access to one or two sources [of news] maybe once or twice a day, to it being 24 hours and constant," she said.

"I'm honestly not worried about teenagers about teenagers being disengaged from what's happening in the news.

"They're not necessarily trusting the news source straight away. They're thinking about the influence behind what's being written."

She said a vital skill for students to have in the digital and social media age was media literacy.

"We're teaching them to go and check their sources," she said.

"Those skills are so important when they're exposed to so much media."

University of Melbourne youth sociology professor Dan Woodman said Generation Z's news avoidance was a symptom of the media saturation experienced by younger audiences rather than a decision to be uninformed.

"These are people whose lives are connected online basically 24/7," he said.

"When they say they're disengaged, they're actively avoiding it, which is not something people had to do 20 years ago - they just didn't buy the newspaper.

"Now it's much harder than that. You have to go out of your way to avoid it."

Mr Woodman said the media's recognition of news fatigue and finding different ways of framing some topics might improve engagement.

"People can get over and need a break from certain things," he said.

"Recognising that people occasionally need something else could probably help."

He said the increased media literacy among younger cohorts which might have contributed to them turning off some news was "double-sided".

"Young people are able to spot the various framing of things and can see those different ideological positions or editorial lines," he said.

"That's good, but if it becomes a general 'everyone's lying to us'... it's a bad thing for our society."

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