Advantages

An informed citizenry is a prerequisite for democracy. News apps help people stay up-to-date wherever they are at any given time. Traditional media is fading into the background. More and more, consumers get their news digitally. Concurrently, smartphone use is on the rise, with a 2021 Statista study reporting that 85% of U.S. adults use one. Users of all ages looking to learn more about local, national, and international news can stay up-to-date by downloading a wide variety of apps to their phones. The apps are updated constantly and provide push notifications that display breaking news on the user’s lock screen, which, when selected, show text, photos, video-on-demand, and live video. These notifications inform users much faster than traditional media, which would typically take a minimum of 12 hours. Disabled users can use smartphones by setting up advanced accessibility features like text-to-speech and audio captions displayed on videos. Apps allow retrieval of News updates anywhere there is a cell phone or Wi-Fi signal.

How it works

News apps work through smartphones and can be downloaded for free or purchased through the app store. Each app allows customization to show preferred sections like world news, local news, sports, features, and more. Some apps like Yahoo News and Apple News track what users click on and suggest customized content based on their preferred topics to display for the consumer using artificial intelligence. Most apps default to top news stories of the day while recommending other articles the user might find interesting.

The Facts

Consumers have rapidly advanced from traditional media to digital over the last few decades. The pivotal shift occurred between 2017 and 2018, when time spent consuming digital finally surpassed traditional media, according to Statista. By 2023, 64% of all time spent consuming media is projected to be on digital rather than traditional forms.

Simultaneously, consumers are embracing smartphones at record levels. In 2021, 85% of adults in the U.S. owned a smartphone, with the numbers continuing to rise, according to Statista.  Smartphones allow users to download news apps like CNN, BBC, Yahoo News, Apple News, and more. 

We looked into four apps: CNN, BBC, Yahoo News, and Apple News. You can see in the chart below how each of these apps stacks up against the other.  

CNN and BBC have two of the more popular apps designed for smartphones. Developed in 2010/2011, both serve as an alternative to television news. The CNN app has more downloads and better ratings than the BBC News app, thus coming out on top. It boasts more than 50 million downloads on the Google Play Store.

Apple News and Yahoo News are aggregators of news content, which means they promote stories from other credible news sources like The Washington Post, The New York Times, and more. Additionally, Yahoo News has its own news team, which produces in-house content to supplement the aggregated providers. There is little information about the Apple News app because they keep their content under wraps, but it ranks 4.6 compared to Yahoo’s 4.4 in the Apple App Store.

Long gone are the days where you would have to wait for a newspaper the next day or sit in front of a computer to get the news. Now news can be carried in your pocket on your smartphone using news apps. 

Helpful tips

Be sure to make the most of a news app by parsing through its settings. By allowing the app access to your location, the news will be more tailored to where you are at any given time. You can follow specific sports teams and topics, while others can be more or less prominently displayed. Make use of any relevant accessibility features. If you don’t wish to receive notifications, you can deactivate them to avoid constant alerts.