Embedded Files
May 18, 2025
If you searched up “news” on any browser of your choice, there’s one thing you’d consistently find: political arguments, defenses, and updates. Writers trashing President Trump in an opinion article, other writers defending his actions, and an even larger handful updating the public on his every move. But there are so many other things going on in our world that almost no one hears about, simply because our news channels and websites are flooded with political content.
In the U.S., politics make up a huge part of our culture. Almost every adult has a political party they identify with, and many teenagers take an immense interest in politics. But there are also a lot of teenagers who have zero interest in politics, and constantly scrolling through videos, posts, and articles that have aggressively biased titles are only making those teens’ anxiety around entering the political scene worse.
Screenshot of politically-dominated news results (Photo Credit: Sammy Nishihama)
While politics are definitely important, especially in the U.S., there are so many things that aren’t being highlighted because of the sheer amount of space politics consume in the media. Just recently, researchers in Scotland made a breakthrough that could speed up the hunt for a cure for Alzheimer’s. “We believe this tool could help accelerate findings from the lab into patients, bringing us one step closer to a world free from the heartbreak of dementia,” said Dr. Claire Durrant in an interview with Positive News Magazine. This discovery could drive the research to find a cure for all kinds of dementia, yet it is being overshadowed in the news by politics.
Image used in recent Washington Post article criticized Trump's tariffs and unpredictability (Photo Credit: Ricky Carioti)
There needs to be an appropriate space for emotionally heavy political content - and that place is not a 12 year old’s YouTube shorts recommended page. Politics, while critical to the U.S. and most other countries, are not meant for everyone. There are millions of people who simply don’t need to be hyper aware of the political state of their country; mostly children, who are already in a vulnerable growing stage of their lives. Seeing anxiety-inducing political content with headlines that over exaggerate the truth isn’t helping them at all. Even adults, who are mostly politically active, need to have a space where they can be online and not have a politically-driven TikToks pop up every four videos.
Politics need to be separated from news and social media in a way that allows people who do not want to be exposed to that type of content 24/7 to be online. It simply does not make sense to have content that is emotionally draining for many people in a place where every single person on the internet can and will see it. For many, reading and viewing political content can cause an extreme amount of anxiety and worry, and that should not be a consequence of simply being on the internet. There are trigger warnings on content that are physically disturbing for some - we should begin to take the same precaution with some political content as well.
Sources: Positive News Magazine
Report abuse