Twitter’s significance in the life of teenagers today is obvious. It has become the number one source for all reporting, whether it be reporting emotions, school events, school assignments or social gatherings. This is Twitter’s sole purpose for teenagers: to easily connect to friends and the community.
Aside from teen’s use of Twitter, there are many other ways the network is used. Now, major corporations, websites, news channels and celebrities use the app as another way to connect with society. By choice, we as teenagers have the ability to follow any of these more “credited” accounts. But, we have noticed a common trend among teenagers today: We only follow people we care for (friends, family) or share a common interest with.
What is so wrong with this? Well, we as a board of editors, concluded that the today’s teens only interact with the information they see on their news feeds, making their only knowledge of current events fed to them by whom they choose to follow. There may seem to be no harm in this, but following only certain people creates a bias to one’s newsfeed. Now if a major news event goes viral on Twitter, your feed will only be certain parts of the story that you’re following choose to retweet or respond to.
It is safe to say that Twitter has stolen the spotlight from old fashioned news broadcasting. Because Twitter was introduced with our generation, teenagers feel a sense of comfort when using the app. Where teens lose their comfort is when they venture to the “old school” styles of reporting, like watching news channels and viewing news websites. This presented itself as the biggest problem to the board of editors, teenagers connection to tricky modern day journalism.
Though most news broadcasting stations have their own Twitter accounts, their tweets have the tendency to get lost in teens ever-crowded feeds. Our comment to this trend would be that teens should not look to Twitter for factual reporting.
Traditional TV news and news websites are able to offer something that Twitter can not: vetted and researched journalism. Twitter is unable to offer this because it is all about the first report, which is incapable of going a through the proper editing process.
We want teenagers of today to understand that they should not trust Twitter’s “first news reporting”. Though it may seem reputable, true news can not be wrapped up in 140 characters and be properly edited seconds from the event. And because of this limitation words are twisted in order to grab your attention, to make you want to read what they are writing. With this being said, don’t look to your phone for news. Occasionally turn on the T.V. or visit reputable news websites and get the true reporting of the world.
Leave a Reply