LONDON - Grayling and Opinium’s new The Dis/Connected Consumer Index has discovered females aged over 55 are increasingly hard to reach with public service and health information.

The findings have grave implications for trust in and engagement with governments, brands and media.

The group, dubbed the ‘Opt-Outs’, make up 29% of the UK population, are more likely to be female, retired or blue-collar professionals, and feel a growing sense of alienation from politics and media.

Just 27% watch TV once a month, 60% don’t read print newspapers, 36% don’t read online news and 26% say social media can’t be trusted.

When it comes to public service messaging, nearly 20% say they ‘never’ receive public health information via any channel, one quarter say they receive no government communications and nearly 30% never see any information about politics.

Nearly three quarters say they have no trust that the Government takes actions in the public interest, and 65% feel ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ connected with their local community.

Grayling global CEO Sarah Scholefield said: ‘We are clearly better connected than ever before, but many traditional channels don’t work for everyone.

‘As we come out of one global health emergency and into a serious cost-of-living crisis, this presents a huge challenge to governments, brands, media, service providers and communicators.’

The report was based on a survey of 12,000 adults across the UK, USA, Poland, Germany, France and Singapore and identified four key archetypes in terms of people’s relationship to media.

Josh Glendinning, research director at Opinium, added: ‘Communicating with groups who feel disconnected starts by better understanding them. We hope this research goes some way to improving this understanding and starting an important conversation about how we can reconnect.’