With the technological advances in today’s world, teenagers are equipped to have a constant connection with news. It’s called the World Wide Web for a reason. Yet, every time I sign on to the internet, I either open up Facebook, Twitter, or an FML-type site.
As I pour my Frosted Flakes with the mental clarity of a zombie, I could flip on the television to the Channel 11 local news station. I could find out what is happening in the world. But most mornings I check what kind of ridiculous shirt Sandra Shaw is wearing and make my way over to Comedy Central looking for Scrubs reruns.
So do we, as a generation, honestly care about what is going on in the world? Asking an adult may get you the flat, definitive answer of “no.” But don’t answer that question too quickly for yourself.
The news represents one thing that every high school student, no matter how intelligent, athletic, or mature, cannot seem to wrap their over-indulged mind around: the real world. Every morning that I do choose to watch the news, I come to know that in another school, only forty minutes away, a student was shot walking home, that my parents won’t have enough money to send me to college, and that once again a soldier was sent home in a casket. Maybe it’s not so much that teenagers don’t care, but that we’re too afraid to.
Teenagers aren’t the only ones who are trying to avoid the terror that the news confronts. Since when has Ashton Kutcher’s latest Tweet become newsworthy for the Today Show, top magazines, and even the local news station? Trying to balance fun with reality, even the media community is using entertainment to cover up how harsh the world has become.
But if we never learn to accept the news or pay attention to it, the fear of the real world will never go away. There will be no need to have news any more, and the journalism field will fall by the wayside. In order to save the reporter, we must first learn to save the news.
I’m not always willing to open myself to the kind of tragedy that happens outside of my own safety-zone, so why should I tell everyone else to? I’d like to stick to my status updates and news feed on Facebook (where the information I find consists of song lyrics, and the worst thing I find out is that Bobby and Kim broke up), but at some point I’m going to have to grow up.
Learning to deal with a world that isn’t always going to end well, like a predictable, happy-go-lucky sitcom, takes time. We teens will have to try the news before we rule it out. It won’t be easy, and we won’t like it, but at least we’ll know what kind of crazy world is out there for us to improve in time.
Allison Siegel can be reached for comment at at [email protected].