How news is received today

The younger generations seem to have a bad habit of getting a lot of their news through social media without always fact checking the sources. I would have to say that I would fall under that category as I tend to believe information I see right away to only find out later that the information was either fake or twisted in some way that wasn’t really the truth.

The media I receive on my personal social media accounts are mostly sports related as that is what I am usually focused on.I read news articles based on what I see first. I don’t have a system where I look for certain articles. For the most part, I read the article if it catches my eye because it is something interesting to me or because it looks like it might be something funny. The truth is that half of the sports sites that I follow are constantly creating memes which exaggerate the truth and are supposed to be a joke. The other half is information that is biased towards my teams as the writers i follow are generally fans of the same teams I am.

While I use Snapchat the most when it comes to communicating with friends, I receive the majority of my news from Instagram. In my opinion, Instagram is the best social media platform to receive news because it is quick and easy to post information and also to see what is being posted. It is also provides a lot of visuals as just looking at my platform now someone posted a video of the Iona soccer field and there is snow coming down so I can assume the news is that it is snowing at Iona without even reading anything.

The younger generations have been on a decline when it comes to voting in Presidential Elections. The most recent election between President Trump and Hillary Clinton was an all time low. Some would argue that social media is making the younger generations less informed than in generations past.

As a society, I don’t know if the numbers in the Trump vs Clinton election was because the younger generation was uninformed but instead I think it was because we realized there were major issues with both candidates. I can’t say for sure that the reason Trump is President is because of social media but I will say that from my perspective he used social media much more effectively than Clinton when it came to pointing out fake news supporting Clinton while somehow getting people to buy into fake news that was supporting him.

The younger generation, including myself, must do a better job of verifying which sources on social media are legitimate. It should start with small issues that are personally interesting to the viewer. For me that is sports so if I were to practice realizing which kind of articles are real and which ones are fake, I could do that for any topic. The younger generation is moving away from traditional media and one day all news might come from social media so identifying fake news is essential for the future of the country.

Related posts:

During my business trip, I lived in an Airbnb flat with a bookshelf. So, I came across a book, or rather an album by Chinese artist Peng Wei “Letters From a Distance”. She made Chinese ink paintings…