Over the course of this past week while students were lying on beaches or catching up on some much needed post-midterm rest, here’s what happened around the world: Trump is planning to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a Russian ex-spy was poisoned in the UK and there were two shootings in the US that provoked national attention. It might seem as if I was scouring news sites during my break (I might have been doing that for fun, but that’s beside the point), but all I did to find out about these stories was look at my phone notifications.
I’ve noticed that on this campus and many others, college students simply aren’t reading the news anymore. It is terrible to think that the most important news stories that students pay attention to pertain to royal engagements, award shows and celebrity gossip. The first problem with this is that the people supposedly being primed to be future leaders and intellectuals are ignorant of what is happening around them. It is going to be a rude awakening to students that, as adults, know nothing about how tariffs or environmental policy can actually affect them.
College students are essentially hurting themselves by siloing their knowledge to primarily involve pop culture or whatever appears on their Snapchat or Twitter feeds. Students then become desensitized to any issue that is not on social media.
In addition to hurting themselves individually, students are collectively being held back. This university fosters a climate of idleness that evolves to c n reate an environment of intellectual mediocrity. This environment stifles any type of curiosity or agency about what is going on around us. This explains the lack of action for students to even be involved on our own campus through clubs and Student Association. A quote from “Fahrenheit 451” reminded me of this: “We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"
If you are offended by my claims, please prove me wrong. Start talking in class about what has happened in the news, urge teachers to go beyond pop culture in discussion of current events, listen to a podcast or two. Some of the best advice I have gotten is to read the news, not watch it. At the very least, students should download a news app on their phones to be notified; that makes a huge difference. I’m sorry for those so content in their ignorance that they don’t even try.