LOS ANGELES — Sarah Greenberg illustrates the problem newspapers have in retaining readers, especially young ones.

The 24-year-old law student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock let her Wall Street Journal subscription lapse after the papers piled up unread on her porch and rarely checks the local Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. She gets most of her news from local television or Internet sites such as CNN and MSNBC, and then “only if something catches my attention.”

Other young people show similar behavior, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll on the pop culture and entertainment habits of young people in America. Just 9% of teenagers aged 12 to 17 and 17% of young adults aged 18 to 24 in the survey said they read a newspaper for current events.

By contrast, 28% of the teenagers and 38% of the young adults surveyed said they got their news from local television. That was the most popular source of news for young adults and the second most popular for teenagers after “talking with friends and family.”

Newsmagazines fared worse, with 2% of both groups saying they got their news from those sources. Slightly more — 3% of teenager and 6% of young adults — reported getting their news from satiric comedy shows such as the “Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” while 10% of teenagers said they get news from Viacom Inc.’s MTV Networks.

The nationwide Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of 839 teenagers and 811 young adults was conducted by Knowledge Networks Inc. over the Internet between June 23 and July 3. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The findings are consistent with reports about declining newspaper circulation. The Newspaper Association of America, the industry’s trade group, reported in its most recent “Newspapers by the Numbers” study that 51.6 % of the population aged 18 and over read a daily newspaper last year, down from 58.6% in 1998.

Ten percent of the teenagers and 12% of the young adults said they don’t pay attention to current events.

“I don’t really care, unless there’s something important happening,” said Cameron Anibas, 15, of Durand, Wisconsin, a poll participant, in a follow-up interview. He said he plays video games on the Internet, listens to music on his iPod and catches reruns of “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” on television amid a busy sports schedule.

While not much interested in the news, young people do like the movies, although not necessarily because the film is any good. Going out with friends or seeing an ad for a film were the two biggest motivators for seeing a movie in a theater, according to seven out of 10 teenagers.

Just 11% of teenagers and 16% of young adults said they were motivated to see a movie based on a review.

“Bad movies” were far down the list among both age groups as a reason for disliking going to theaters, with just 13% of the teens and 12% of the young adults citing it. Going on a date was cited by 2% of young adults — and none of the teens — as a reason for going to the movies.

Robert Sharp, 16, of Grant’s Pass, Ore., said he chooses movies based on the title and the trailers, or when his “girlfriends” drag him along. Even then, he said he’s bored easily.

“I don’t like to sit in movie theaters,” Mr. Sharp said in a follow-up interview. “I have a short attention span.”

Sizeable numbers of poll respondents in both age groups said they’d rather see a movie at home if it were available the same day it came out in theaters, a move that has been resisted by theater owners worried about losing their advantage over cable. Among teens, 35% said they’d rather watch a movie at home, with 29% preferring the theater and 36% saying it would depend on the movie.

Young adults were even bigger homebodies, with 49% preferring to see a movie at home compared with 10% in the theater and 41% saying it depended on the movie.

Almost half the teenagers, 47%, and almost as many young adults, 45%, in the Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll said they would watch a movie on a computer, with fewer expressing interest in watching movies on cell phones and iPods.

The flexibility of younger people has caused rethinking about distribution at studios such as News Corp.’s Fox Filmed Entertainment. Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of the studio, said it doesn’t matter how people watch his movies, so long as the studio gets paid.

“Where technology becomes most useful is as a tool to maximize the enjoyment of entertainment in the time available,” said Mr. Gianopulos in his office on Fox’s Century City, California, studio lot. “The ability to manage the consumption of entertainment around busy schedules is the great opportunity.”

The film industry’s anti-piracy campaign has registered among young people. By a large majority, both age groups said it was a crime to buy a bootlegged CD or DVD or to download from unauthorized file-sharing services.

They were more ambiguous about copying legally obtained DVDs and CDs from friends. Among teenagers, 58% said there was no crime in copying a DVD or videotape from a friend who paid for it compared with 42% who thought it was a minor or serious crime. Young adults saw even less harm, with 60% saying there was nothing wrong with copying a DVD or videotape from a friend who paid for it, while 41% called it a crime.

Mr. Sharp said he recently tried to watch a friend’s bootlegged copy of “Superman” and turned away after five minutes. He said his conscience didn’t bother him so much as the poor quality of the recording. “It wasn’t worth it,” Mr. Sharp said.