High school kids don't have a clue.
At least, that's what society implies. High school students are too plugged into their iPods and PlayStations, and are not connected with reality, right? However, according to a new study by the John S. and James. L. Knight Foundation, high school students follow the news more often than they are given credit for.
More than half of students polled get news online at least once a week, and 11 percent get news online everyday. While this may not seem like a lot, think about how many responsibilities and hobbies high schoolers have-classes, sports, extracurricular activities, dating, and the aforementioned PlayStation, just to name a few.
The Knight survey also uncovered students' thoughts on the news media's trustworthiness. Students find television news to be the most accurate news source, followed by newspapers, internet, radio, and blogs.
And one more key finding of the report - high school kids enjoy entertainment news, such as "The Colbert Report" - a lot. A whopping 46 percent of those polled follow programs such as "The Daily Show" at least once a week. While journalism teachers will scream that teenagers will take entertainment news to heart, at least one high school student understands fluff's place in the world.
"Okay, I admit - I enjoy celebrity news every so often," said Lark Turner, a student from Minnesota. "I figure that enjoying those programs should be acceptable until I'm about 25, so I might as well take advantage of liking them while I can. Seriously, I try to keep in mind the irrelevance and materialism so evident in Hollywood culture, but I'm not going to lie and say that People Magazine isn't a feed on my homepage."
What does all this mean? For starters, it means while high school students are more aware than we realized, there is still work to be done in getting them even more involved. Sure, it's encouraging that students follow the news to some degree, but clearly these news media consumption habits have to increase for students to become well informed, productive citizens as adults. For example, how can students participate in the democratic process of voting, if they are not totally aware of candidates and the issues they represent?
The study also sets off other alarms. For instance, why do students find television news considerably trust worthier than newspapers? Their parents certainly don't trust television news. According to a 2003 Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, conducted by telecommunications professor Bob Papper, only 20.2 percent of audiences believe "most of what" they hear on local television news. A stunning 43.4 percent believe half of what they hear is false. So, why the discrepancy between adults and teenagers? Here's a theory - thanks to high profile newspaper scandals, such as Jayson Blair at the New York Times, perhaps students have grown to believe that newspapers cannot be trusted. After all, there have been no high profile television news scandals, which explains why teenagers trust television news, but not why adults question the medium.
It's also worth noting students trust radio news even less than television and newspapers. Radio news has been fortunate to mostly avoid misconducts, so why does it receive little trust from teenagers? Maybe because Generation Y spends little time actually listening to the radio, let alone radio news-with iPods and CD players, teenagers don't want programmers telling them what to listen to; they can program their car stereos themselves, thank you very much.
But enough with the doom and gloom. High school students are watching, listening, and reading the news more than anyone realized. With this positive base to work from, it's time for educators and journalists alike to convince teenagers that following the news is just as gratifying as a round of Halo on the X-Box.
Write to Gerry at gappel@bsu.edu
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