Facebook vs. The News

   Facebook news, in my eyes, isn't real news 99% of the time. When I click onto Facebook, my newsfeed ends up filled with not only crazy, non-sense status updates, but also news articles and links. But, the news is never “real” news. Most of the time, it tends to be news about which celebrity is sleeping with who, or which designer made the best impression during fashion week. Rarely is it ever something that is actually important and needs to be known all throughout the world. But, I think that is sort of a good thing the more I have thought on it. I would rather be seeing information about fashion week or sports teams than reading something about some sort of terrorist attack (though, tragically, that has happened to become information in the news quite often).

Facebook isn’t the only place, though. News is everywhere, except, the one place everyone used to know it from; newspapers. It’s so rare to see someone reading a newspaper. I’d gone into Target recently for groceries, and overheard a worker talking to a customer there. She had said, “You’ve got to come into our store now to get our weekly ads. The Sun News doesn’t do much anymore.” When hearing that, it felt a bit odd to think, “wow, no one really cares for an actual newspaper anymore.” And it’s true; never do you see someone with paper news. Most of the time, the person is scrolling through a news article, or app, on a smart device.

But forget ads for the best sales in store; think about real, actual news. Like I’d mentioned previously, the real news recently has sadly had to do with tragic, violent acts of terrorism. Not only do people read those news articles, but it tends to fill people with nothing but fear. When I had heard of the attack on Las Vegas, it really made my thoughts race, and I’m sure it did the same to so many others. Not to mention, Donald Trump’s use of Twitter during hard times doesn’t help. It tends to upset so many people, and doesn’t help Trump with all the people criticizing him for turning to what’s supposed to be a casual social media platform, rather than an actual news source.

Twitter makes it so easy to know what is happening in the world, though. I think it’s easier to find current news on Twitter than it is on any other sort of website out there. If it weren’t for Twitter’s trending topics, I might just be a little bit clueless to what’s happening in the world. Thankfully, it doesn’t always have to be real news. Sometimes, trending topics on Twitter are as fun as a dog in a cute Halloween costume. Other times, it can be something a bit more eyebrow raising, like news of North Korea. Like the article mentioned, 2013 had so many wide ranged ‘Top Stories’. 2016 was a year for Twitter, as well. With trending topics ranging from movies to important social movements.

   Facebook had these trends, too.

Either way, we, as social media users, take in news from day to day, and based on our morals and opinions, determine how we analyze it.