• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 3, 2015

The times they are a-changin’, although it’s not clear if that’s a good thing. Most millennials, ages 18-33, (61%) say they get their political news from Facebook, according to the latest data from the Pew Research Center, while 37% get their political news from local TV. These are almost exactly reverse the proportions for baby boomers, ages 50-68, with 60% saying they get their political news from local TV, compared to 39% for Facebook.

Members of Generation X -- yes, that’s still a thing, and apparently I belong to it -- bridge the gap between millennials and baby boomers, forming a tidy temporal progression: 51% say they get their news on politics and government from Facebook, while 46% get it from local TV (my suggestion for our generational slogan is, “Gen X: not too old, not too dumb, just right!”).

Interestingly millennials are more exposed to political news on Facebook than the older cohorts, even thought they express less interest in it. Overall 24% of millennial Facebook users say at least half the posts they see relate to politics and government, compared to 18% of Gen Xers and 16% of baby boomers. But just 26% of millennials said they are particularly interested in politics and government, compared to 34% of Gen Xers and 45% of baby boomers.

To be fair, Pew points out that younger adults have displayed less interest in politics than older adults for a while now: back in 1996 64% of adults ages 50-64 said they follow politics at least somewhat closely, compared to 49% of adults ages 18-29.

To their credit millennials are also exposed to a more diverse range of political opinions on Facebook, with just 18% saying the political posts they see are mostly or always in line with their own views, compared to 21% of Gen Xers and 31% of baby boomers. That finding would seem to contradict the conventional wisdom that social media forms an ideological echo chamber, at least in the case of younger generations.