Why do young adults not watch the news?
from a young adult
When I was a little kid, my parents would ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYSSSS—blast the news. My sister and I were forced to watch it no matter how irrelevant it was to our tiny kid brains.
As I grew up, that habit stuck with me. So now that I’m in college, I’m honestly shocked by how many people either flat-out don’t watch the news or only get their information from Instagram or TikTok.
I’m laughing through the tears with this one, because I genuinely cannot imagine a world where everyone is this uninformed. Obviously, no one can ever know the full story unless they’re a direct witness or a primary source, but it still baffles me that people can’t take 30 minutes out of their day to watch something like NBC Nightly News.
And sure, maybe getting news from TikTok or Instagram can be okay. But what nobody seems to talk about is how much of the “news” on these apps is just straight-up misinformation. Like, I’d argue at least 90% of it (don’t quote me on that statistic) is just random clips stitched together and narrated by an AI voice. What’s genuinely terrifying is scrolling through the comments and realizing how few people question any of it.
One example that really stuck with me was a story about a woman named Daniel Carter who swung her bag at a man attempting to rob her. In the real story, the man was a white male, and long story short, he was badly injured due to her defending herself (she’s a local MMA coach). His family tried to sue her for his injuries, but the court ultimately found her not guilty.
The TikTok version of this story, however, completely twisted the narrative. They changed the attacker to a Black man and used clips from Judge Judy.. yes, Judge Judy to make it seem like real courtroom footage. What shocked me even more was that no one in the comments questioned it. Not a single person said, “Wait… why does this courtroom look like a reality TV show?”
If people keep consuming media without doubt or double-checking sources, I genuinely think our society is heading toward something straight out of Fahrenheit 451 (I read it in eighth grade, so again… don’t quote me).
Long story short: watch the news. And please, don’t believe everything you see online.