Why Negative Headlines Get More CLICKS

The panel argues that today’s media environment rewards attention, emotion and engagement, making media literacy increasingly important. With social platforms becoming a significant source of news, understanding why certain headlines reach us can matter as much as consuming them. Pew found that 53% of U.S. adults said they at least sometimes got news from social media in 2025, including 21% who did so often. Facebook and YouTube were the largest individual social news platforms, reaching 38% and 35% of U.S. adults regularly.
The attention-economy argument has measurable support. A large study analyzing roughly 370 million headline impressions found that adding one negative word to an average-length headline increased its click-through rate by approximately 2.3%. News influencers are becoming another part of the equation. Pew found 21% of U.S. adults regularly got news from social-media news influencers in 2025, rising to 38% among adults ages 18–29. Most consumers said they encountered that content rather than actively seeking it.