Life Blogs With Noor

Hello!
So I originally wrote this for my awesome English teacher’s blog but I thought I’d post it on here as well!

Enjoy:

Hey there Langers (or possible English 2 Honor-ers)! Today I’m going to be explaining to all of you: why teens should keep up with the news and politics. I’m assuming that if you’re reading this blog post, you are a teenager, however if you happen to not be said teen (heyyo parents, teachers and adults) all of these points still apply. My main goal of this post is to encourage teens (ah yes, our fruitful youth) to become more open-minded, aware, and informed about the many issues that plague our world today; and none of this would be possible without the help and support of our fellow adults. Now, back to the cool kids, before I scare you away with those literal-definition-of-boring words (hearing about The News doesn’t get you excited? whaaaaa?), I promise that everything I’m going to talk about is the opposite of boring, just, trust me alright? Great,  now that that’s over, moving right along!

It seems as though there will never be a day in which teens are taken seriously. We are the always-on-that-damn-phone, overly-egotistical, generally lazy, and uneducated generation, right? Of course not. Though our parents probably disagree. No matter how much work we do it’s never enough, and I often feel as though there’s a large disconnect between our age group and previous generations. So, what the heck does this have to do with the news?

Everything.

I’m going to take a wild guess and say that your parents most likely didn’t raise you with watching CNN, ABC, or other similar channels in replace of Sunday cartoons.  And if they did, well… great? You’re one step ahead of everybody else. Watching the news and keeping tabs on politics is something that we automatically associate with adults and ‘adulthood’ in general. You might have been raised by parents with already set, very specific political and/or moral beliefs, or maybe politics was simply a subject that you never talked about at home. Either way, the actual discussion of political and/or world issues between adults and youth is pretty lacking.

Teens aren’t exactly encouraged to educate themselves about these topics in the first place, because even if we did, it’s not like we’d have anyone to talk to about them anyways. To all my awesome parents and/or teachers still reading this at the moment, I promise I’m not trying to call you out right now, but I’m kind of going to (still love you, pinky swear).

Regardless of whether or not you’ve been consistently keeping up with the news, chances are you’ve heard, and formed your own opinions, on Trump. Trust me, I can practically hear your groans, but let me set the scene real quick. Have any of you guys ever tried to talk to an adult about Trump? Whether it was to hear their opinions about something he’s done or out of a genuine curiosity as to what his presidency means, chances are your responses were something along one of these lines:

1. I hate that orange cheeto man, he is the worst thing to ever happen to America!
2. Trump will fix America and be the force that unites our country!
3. I honestly don’t care about him. Don’t ask me.
4. You’re too young to be worrying about him, go stress out over college or something.

All four of these responses are something I myself have received when trying to bring up politics, more specifically Trump, with any adult. After a while, I just gave up on turning to adults about politics at all.

And that’s when I learned why teens themselves should stay updated about these topics.

First and foremost, everybody has their own bias, whether it be blatantly obvious or not. If we only rely on listening to the people around us, we can unintentionally be misinformed about many issues and their aspects. Now, don’t get me wrong, this bias is still significantly present within many news and media outlets, but what’s important is to be aware of them. If you are constantly only hearing one perspective or opinion, you won’t be able to compare it to anything else. Fortunately, the more exposure you have to the differents types of news sources in the media, the easier it becomes to recognize their biases. Being able to recognize biases is incredibly important in becoming more informed; when you’re able to look at multiple perspectives/opinions regarding one issue, you can take information from multiple sides in order to form your own stance. While this may sound like common sense, you would be surprised at the amount of people who get information from one unreliable source and spread it like wildfire. Even if their intentions were originally pure, this type of sharing can lead to huge problems in terms of reliable information. Which brings me to my second point: Fake News.

Fake news, you’ve heard of it, you love it (HA.), and you have no idea how in the heck it exists. I mean, any person with an inkling of knowledge would be able to recognize a fake article, right? It’s a no from me on this one folks. Many people nowadays only read the title of an article before they blast it on twitter, instagram, facebook, or any other social media site they can get their hands on. Not only are certain titles incredibly misleading, but there are also many unreliable sources that publish articles specifically intended to spark controversy or spread incorrect information. Again, when people further perpetuate this spreading of “fake news”, it normally comes from a place of good intentions. However this misinformation can lead to many issues in trying to figure out what is actually happening with an event that has just occurred. The more we read, watch, and overall expose ourselves to the news, the more we’ll know about the current events happening. If we’re more aware of what’s already occurring in terms of the political climate, it will be slightly easier to pinpoint obviously unrealistic stories and sources. Additionally, if something huge (like an announcement of a new policy or an act of terror) occurs, we’ll have a better understanding of where we should go to get further information on the topic and also what to simply filter out.

I think what scares teens off the most in terms of learning about the news and/or politics is the mentality that we don’t “matter”. That regardless of the amount of information we know about politics, our political views will never have any actual impact. In my opinion, it is this narrative that harms almost everything in our society today (not just politics). How many people didn’t vote in the election because they thought their vote wouldn’t matter? Hundreds of thousands. Yet, by all of these people collectively thinking they couldn’t make an impact, they ended up making a bigger one in a (probably) less favorable way. That one vote is never just one vote. In fact, the notion that you have no affect on the political climate, or any other social climate, is 100% false. How? Well, my fellow teen, chances are you have an adult (hello again parents/ teachers), or multiple adults involved in your life. Additionally, these adults may be people who you (whether it feels like it or not) can influence in regards to the things that you care about. All the times that you have been disregarded at Thanksgiving? Every moral question that turns into a full blown screaming match? These normally result from adults automatically assuming that we don’t know anything about politics, let alone care about them. They think that we don’t know about the tragedies and hardships of life. And to a certain extent, they’re right. We haven’t been alive for as long as they have. We haven’t experienced as many things as they have. But what we lack in age we can make up for in knowledge. If you learn about a certain political issue that you then form strong opinions about, express them. There is a possibility that you may be faced with differing views, but there’s also the possibility that you could be on the same page. Either way, when adults realize that you not only feel passionately about an issue, but are also very informed on its subject matter, they will listen to you. They may not agree, but they’ll listen. That in itself is already making an impact! And heyyo adults/parents/teachers reading this! This is where you can help us. If you know a teenager who’s passionate about an issue, please listen to them. If a young person is curious about a political topic, don’t dismiss them. Even though it may seem like us teens “dont care” about what you guys tell us; your support and/or dismissal can make a huge difference in our lives (whether it be positive or negative).

Back to my teens. Your voice does have an impact, and while you may not be able to vote yet, you can still be the driving force behind the progression of our society. Whether we like it or not, we are the future. There are many people who feel as though teens shouldn’t be getting involved in these issues due to us not being “experienced” enough. But to that I respond with this: won’t us getting involved now only make us more experienced in the future?

Let’s face it, our world is a mess. But if we can recognize that, then band together to learn about and speak out against the many issues plaguing our everyday lives, we can be the people who spark the flame of change for better in our world. If we learn about politics now, we’ll already be experienced when the time does come to vote. If we are able to see things from multiple perspectives now, we’ll be a little more understanding when coming face to face with conflicts later. If we’re able to recognize injustices now, we can make sure that we do everything in our power to prevent them from occurring again.

We are our future. So let’s make sure we’re a bright one.