BY KAPRICE SANCHEZ, Executive Editor
On March 27, the U.S. Army had lost one of their own. Sgt. Michael C. Cable, 26, was killed by a teenager in Afghanistan while playing with local children.
Instead of the whole nation mourning the death of one of our soldiers, on April 1 the teen population mourned the death of Shain Gandee from the MTV show, Buckwild.
Teens have grown more focused on the media than what’s happening in the real world.
Just moments after the press release on Gandee’s death, Twitter and Facebook were blowing up with the devastating news. That day, a Facebook page was created to honor Gandee’s death and got 100,470 likes.
Junior Kaylie Lederman was one of many that took the news to heart.
“I was sad, he was such a big part of the show Buckwild. He seemed like such a carefree person that just wanted to have fun,” Lederman said.
As I checked on Facebook, I looked for a page honoring Cable’s death. That page only got 1,807 likes compared to the 100,470 likes for Gandee. This is when I noticed the underlining problem of the internet.
The internet is how teenagers get their news, and it is reforming minds. It’s taking away from the important information, such as the death of a U.S. soldier, and making the staged TV more important that what is really going on.
Just like many other teenagers, I watched the show Buckwild, and I was familiar with Gandee’s character in the show.
Even though I was sad about how young Gandee was when he passed, it just made me realize what is happening to the generation that I am living in.
While neither death is more important than the other, media is shaping teenager’s minds to think that social media is real life rather than what is actually happening.
The internet is the feeding ground for teenagers to find out what is hot in the news. Most teens don’t even bother to watch the news anymore, and I am guilty of this too.
When the bombing in Boston happened, the first place I saw it was on Twitter. My whole news feed was blowing up with the trend “hash tag: PrayforBoston.”
Junior Sam Bower was one of many that was less than happy about the bombing in Boston, and expressed it with a strongly worded tweet.
“It takes a real coward to be able to harm innocent people, especially people who are running for a good cause,” Bower said
With the internet being in the palms of our hands, it’s easy to get caught up in the social drama that the media puts online, but really how much of that information can be really trusted?
Instead of trusting the news that circulates on the internet, that anybody can manipulate, look where the facts can be trusted.
The world is a fast moving place, but take some time, slow things down and figure out what is important.
There’s a difference between “real world” shows and the actual real world. Next time a life changing event happens, go to the news and figure it out. Don’t “hash tag” it and make it the new trend on twitter.