America is a country known for movies, music, and television. I think we are too brainwashed with celebrities. We care about nothing but what is happening to Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, and Kim Kardashian. If you ask a fourteen year old kid to name three senators, they will not have a clue. But, if you ask that same kid about the cast of Jersey Shore, they will answer before you snap your fingers. I say that is wrong. We should have fun listening to music and watching T.V., but we should also know what is going on in the real world.
Right now, there are elections going on. I bet at least 80% of the teenagers in America don’t know the names of the candidates. They might just name one or two, like Barack Obama. This is why it is a very serious issue. We as teenagers need to watch the news. We should know what is going on in our neighborhoods, most importantly in the U.S.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t watch the Grammy’s or The Teen Choice Awards, we should watch that. But we should force ourselves to watch the news.
Now, in schools everyone only looks at the popular girl or the popular boy. We do what they do; we fall too much in peer pressure. Why won’t the popular girl or boy watch the news? Because they don’t want to look uncool or nerdy. In my opinion, even the coolest kids in school should do what they want to, not what people want them to do. If they want to know more about the world, they should turn on CNN or any other news channel. Not only will we know more about the world, but we will get more knowledge.
What can we do now? We can do a lot to help. We as teens are still young. We can change ourselves. The only thing you can do is cut down on the usage of the internet. I don’t think losing YouTube for an hour a day will hurt so much. In that hour, we can watch the news. Also, reading the newspaper can help a lot too. Every day, getting a newspaper won’t hurt that much. A newspaper costs twenty-five cents. It is not that much for every day. Just by doing these two simple things, we can learn so much. It’s not all about Beyoncé or Lady Gaga; it’s about becoming educated adults.