Our daughter said "why do they always show such bad news? Why can't they show news that's happy or about 'good things'?". Her words were familiar to me, basically the same thoughts I have about how depressing the news is. Being a self-confessed news junkie, I've had the same thoughts many times. Why not give us news that's uplifting and inspirational instead of depressing and negative?
During my university studies I read and studied psychology and sociology. The gist (albeit some 30 years ago), was that news agencies focus on negative news because it's sensational - gets a rise out of people and focusses their attention on the news. More recently I think things have changed, not the least of which is an explosion of the amount and kinds of news that we can procure for ourselves. The internet with its vast amounts of blogs where people can freely voice their opinions, new news delivery like the Huffington Post, online news from major news providers and so on. Today, people can find whatever news they want, in whatever tone they want (some even more unpleasant than mainstream news). I commented to my daughter that I thought her Millennial generation (she's 17) would have an impact on how the news business would look, and the tone it would take, in the future.
She and her generation are constantly on their iDevices - smartphones, tablets, laptops - and she at least reads and watches many different sources of "news" everyday. She keeps up with politics, entertainment, and other everyday issues, most of which are not sensational in the traditional sense. They're more topical, critiques of personalities like movie stars, reality personas, and other things like how cows emit large amounts of CO2. It's rare that she sits and watches mainstream baby-boomer news, and last night was a clear indication that she doesn't like to hear the barrage of negativity in the news.
This morning I went online searching for answers to the question "why is the news so negative?" I came upon an article posted by the BBC about a study performed by psychologists at the McGill University in Canada. The study found that people have a "negativity bias" and that "we've evolved to react quickly to potential threats. Bad news could be a signal that we need to change what we're doing to avoid danger." The study goes on to show that even thought people react more quickly to negative stories or words, and that it is likely a biological response, when asked what kind of news they prefer, they say positive stories; that the news is too focussed on the negative - just what my daughter said.
When you go looking for the impact Millennials are having on news consumption and news generation, you find a bunch of interesting research. It's not just the impact they're having on the news - what we watch and how we watch it - Millennials have impacted many other things. A piece of research by Pew Research Center outlines many ways Millennials are impacting society, and compares this cohort with GenX, Boomers and Silents. A post on Conscious Life News shows that Millennials are impacting how Americans drive, not so much "how", rather how little. They are driving less, which is driving down the use of fuels, and it is such a staggering effect that car "retirements" are now exceeding car purchases!
So clearly Millennials are having an impact on society in general, but what about the news? Well, it turns out that people are less trusting of the mainstream news these days, in general across most generations. In a more recent study found on Pew Research Center in the Journalism and News section, Millennials are more likely to get their news from Facebook than local TV, and vice versa for the Boomer generation. But that doesn't mean that Millennials agree with what they see on FB, as the article points out.
"Viewed in the context of the ongoing debate over political polarization in social media, for example, it is the Facebook users in the oldest of the three generations studied here who are most likely to see political content on the site that supports their own views: 31% of Baby Boomers on Facebook who pay attention to political posts say the posts they see are mostly or always in line with their own views, higher than both Generation Xers (21%) and Millennials (18%). At the same time, though, Baby Boomers are the least reliant on this platform as a source for their news – meaning that at least at the moment, this affects a smaller share of them. And, across all three generations, most Facebook users who pay attention to political content do, in fact, see views on the site that aren’t in line with their own."What seems fairly clear is that my daughter is right, news, at least mainstream news is fairly negative and depressing, I can't disagree with that. It's also seemingly clear that news sources are increasing and changing, not just because of Millennials, but because people have more choice and can seek out news that agrees with their views, or differs from the staid old offerings we've had for decades. I also believe that while the Millennial generation has been criticized for being overindulged and self-absorbed, research is showing that they may just be better for the planet and for society in general than we give them credit for. I like saying that I'm a short-term pessimist and long-term optimist. In this case, I think the long-term with the Millennials coming into their own might just be a really good thing. Besides, it's not like we have a choice, right? ;-)
