By Rishima Sachdeva and Meir Singh Pandher
“The news is too long and stretched out; I don’t have enough patience for the ads and the talking. I’d rather watch a YouTube video or something.”
News: It’s any recent event that is reported. Well… not so much anymore. It’s not that reliable, most things news isn’t even considered news, and it’s kind of boring.
These days, if you ask any young person if they watch the news, the answer will most likely be no. Most teenagers claim that the content that TV provides them is uninteresting. Are they the ones In the wrong here? “I don’t think the news that the news channels provide is really that interesting, I’m all for knowing more about what’s happening around the world, but the news just doesn’t do it for me,” says Samaira, a 14-year-old student. “Everything that the TV channels say in 15 minutes, I could find out for myself in 5 by reading an article on my phone.” The fact is that most of the youth is interested in some type of news, just not the one portrayed on the big screen.
The red-lipped lady in a pencil skirt and the man in the blue suit may have been the biggest source of news for the previous generations, but for this one, they definitely aren’t. Common Sense Media conducted a 2020 nationally representative survey of teens (ages 13–18) that found that the most common way teens got the news was from personalities, influencers, and celebrities followed on social media or YouTube (39%), despite trusting this type of news source less than other forms, such as local newspapers or local TV news networks.
Alyna Gumber, a full-time small business owner and a part-time student in 9th grade, says, “ Most of the time, I’m working or studying and don’t have much time. so, even if I were interested in the news ( I’m not interested in the type that the news channels provide), I wouldn’t put on news channels just because whenever I see someone else watching the news, there’s a long ad break after what feels like every 5 minutes.” And she’s not wrong. An analysis conducted by livemint of the prime time of six news channels shows that 60% of prime time slots went to ads, the rest to news; the number of commercials in TV network programming grew from 10.7 minutes last to 10.9 minutes this year. By the way, the longest commercial ever run on television? It is 13 hours (not kidding).
The youth are being deterred from the news because it is what they watch. Everyone’s family puts on some channel during dinner, and this is how it’s treated them. The news is on its last legs, and the youth is there watching its downfall.