The T.V. is on in the background while eating dinner. A newspaper is always lying around the house, unread. On Twitter the trending tags vary from #lovewins to #feelthebern2016  to #prayforsyria but they get skimmed over for humorous tweets. When a teacher asks,”Did anyone watch the news last weekend?” While some students’ hands shoot up others seem to physically recoil in their seats and immediately start tuning out. Students are purposely oblivious to the news.

What news sources students’ get their information from could cause a big impact. Junior Jocelyn Martinez  said,” I get most of my news from friends telling me what’s going on. To be honest, I pretty much will believe whatever they tell me. But, obviously I have common sense so I can tell when something sounds off, I don’t really watch the news, they’re really boring.” Unsurprisingly, not many teenagers watch the news or try to verify whatever they hear from friends. Teens seem to think that if an issue is important enough they’ll hear about it eventually.

A lot of people seem to view the all news as bad news. This is for many reasons, mainly because the news is mostly filled with negative content. In rapper, J. Cole’s mixtape “The Come Up” track 17, the rapper’s lyrics clearly portray Cole’s views about the news. 

“…I sit back and watch the news every now and then,

Either get depressed or mad from watching the world just crash, 

Even the weather’s bad…” 

Another reason people don’t watch the news is because they don’t trust the media. Magazines like Time have been known to censor  magazine covers in America while using blunt covers in places like Europe and Asia. Along with these cover changes Time has been also known to soften the news, covering world news in other countries while focusing U.S issues on things of without substance. That’s why a lot of teens rely on social networks to keep themselves informed. However, using social media as a news source is not the best option because people who share or comment about these news pieces often add opinions. That are often misguided and unavoidably biased. A student, name withheld, said,”I get all my news from Twitter, I thinks it’s trustworthy.”

Even in an age where information is so accessible people still have no interest in current events. “New news is old news, that’s why I don’t care about the news. Even if the news were entertaining I wouldn’t watch it,” said junior Matthew Richman. “I consider myself a smart person, I just don’t see how being informed matters. I don’t really think we can make a difference,” followed up Martinez. The level of disregard teens have could be seen as alarming, but not everyone agrees. “I don’t think news are important. Why do they make us take history? It’s already happened, there’s no point, same with the news. We should focus on the tomorrow, today sucks.”