Oh, dear...some young people don't care about the mainstream media

In my newspaper today was a syndicated article by Newhouse writer Erin Hoover Barnet entitled "Only Disconnect: Do social sites thwart young people's civic engagement?" The article asks whether Internet use by adolescents and young adults--especially users of LiveJournal-- shields these young people from current events and creates a social disengage.

Barnet says: "Some academics wonder whether heavily social sites such as LiveJournal are fueling an erosion of young adults' engagement in public affairs and use of mainstream news sources to the deteriment of democracy."

I had to smile when I read that because I think any erosion of an engagement with mainstream news is a boon for democracy, not a detriment. Apparently, these "academics" are worried that young Americans will miss out on hearing that 1,000 people attended a protest against Bush, when it was actually 10,000, or 20,000 when it was actually 100,000. They will miss the 5 seconds devoted one time only to Sibel Edmunds. They will miss out on the experience of waiting all week in vain to hear the talking heads discuss Alberto Gonzales's Enron involvement. They probably missed the media conspiracy to knock Howard Dean out of the presidential race, and they also missed the All-SwiftBoat-All-the-Time interview and ad campaign. And sadly, they missed the round-the-clock discussion of what Martha Stewart was wearing when she was unjustly sent to prison.

They missed a lot.

So much for the liberal media and liberal academia.

David T.Z. Mindich, a journalism professor at St. Michael's College, who wrote the book, Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News, is one of Barnet's sources. Mindich cites the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research's figures: "...in 1972, 46% of college-age Americans read a newspaper every day. Today 21% do. Meanwhile, 11% of 18 to 20-year-olds list news as a major reason for using the Net."

Says Mindich, "The Internet more than any other media is a reflection of people's tastes, whereas, in a newspaper, you encounter information you wouldn't choose yourself or agree with."

Obviously, Mindich has never heard of the practice of reading the sports section or the comics only. To this day, I read only the Metro section on a daily basis. On Wednesday, I read the "cyberscene" section, on Friday I read the entertainment section, on Saturday, I read the garden section, and on Sunday, I read the books and travel section. And I am hardly an adolescent or young adult. And I am quite astute about current events.

To be fair, if I lived in New York, I'd read the Times. As it is, I read it on the Worldwide Web, where I am also able to read The Nation, The Guardian, and a number of other newspapers and magazines. The idea that picking up a newspaper means you will absorb information in which you have no interest may have some merit, but not much.

As for LiveJournal, it includes personal journals, communities, photo-sharing, and news syndication. Users learn what other users are thinking and doing, and that includes the formation of grassroots political activities. It sounds pretty stimulating to me. I am not of a LiveJournal age, but ever since I left the city in which I lived for years, I have found a community on the Internet that I could never find in the rural, conservative area in which I now live.

The other gaping flaw in the Chicken Little argument presented in Barnet's article is that it presumes that people who are not young are well-informed. Consider how many of the people over 30 you know who never read a newspaper or watch television news, or who are glued to Fox or CNN or some other excuse for a news channel. Consider how many people voted for Bush. That is probably all you need to know about how well informed the grown-ups are.