With the holidays coming up and the semester heating up, I don’t have much time to scroll on my phone. Although of course I could still waste my time now and cram study time later. College students have a lot going on: the whirlwind of academia, an ongoing social web, and an endless battle to keep up with laundry, dishes, and hygiene. With all of this happening in my life and my time, my attention is limited, and celebrity news or local news aren’t deemed important enough to hold this attention. I don’t have time to hear about local grocers or celebrity breakups.
Instead of following these stories, I keep up with social media platforms such as Tiktok and Instagram, as most people my age do. On these platforms, I am being shown things other young adults my age are watching and I am able to keep up with popular culture. Some of this is news, or just news that my demographic deems relevant. Most of it is media that my age group finds interesting, or products that my age group are consuming. The algorithm keeps my attention fed with videos that I find interesting and pertinent, so I’m less inclined to turn on Channel 5 News.
If media or news accounts were to adapt with changing times and change their form of output to Tiktok videos or Instagram posts, possibly with links to an article, they could garner the attention of the young adult demographic. They did really well adapting to Twitter and most news accounts manage their Twitter profiles very well. But these days, many teenagers and young adults don’t spend most of their screen time on Twitter, especially since it has been bought up by Instagram. Media is ever-changing, especially in the Digital Age, and I feel as if news has been slow to adapt to recent changes. If they were to do this, I might catch myself scrolling through a news article every once in a while.
