Social media and traditional journalism  provide us with news in different ways. One attracts the younger generations while the other is more appealing to the older generations. Both are convinced their way of news gathering is better, but they need to see the appeals of the other.

Although it’s well known that social media is filled with fake news and inaccuracy, younger generations will prefer the quickness and briefness from social media over the long and deepened articles from traditional journalism. 

Both ways of news gathering have pros and cons, that can be used to be more appealing to the other generation. We need to combine without neglecting important standards. I feel that by combining both ways of news gathering we can find a way that’s appealing to all generations but stays reliable and trustworthy.

But first let’s discuss the appeals for both generations and why they choose their news gathering ways.

Social media attracts the younger generations because it’s interactive and quick. The shorter and exciting, the more appealing it is. We live in a world where our attention span gets shorter and shorter, and social media is responsible for that. That’s why younger generations tend to lean towards short videos about things that are happening instead of reading or listening to long stories.

If you ask younger generations why they prefer social media you’ll often hear “why spend more time on long stories when you can have the same info in 30 seconds.” And I get them, but we still need to realise that with social media comes a lot of fake news.

This is where the pros of traditional journalism come out. I’m not saying that traditional journalism makes no mistakes at all, but we can trust the info more than all the info we see on social media. This is why older generations tend to lean more towards traditional journalism rather than social media. They prefer the deepened, formal and facts-based stories they receive through traditional journalism.

I feel like we need to combine these ways to remain appealing to all generations without neglecting traditional journalism and its standards. If we find a way to stop fake news spreading on social media, we can help younger generations gain news that is accurate, but remains short and feels more personal. Older generations also need to realise that not everything that appears on social media is wrong or fake.

More and more news agencies are starting to make social media accounts where they share accurate news appealing to the younger people and they add a possibility to go to the actual article which is more appearing to the older readers. 

 Both the battle between social media and traditional journalism and generations need to end, and we all need to see that there are ways to work together without crowning one way better than the other.

Text: Manon Coppens