Youth disengagement from news and current affairs

Ofcom/Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism conference:
New News, Future News *
London, 23 November, 2007

Things I said (or ought to have done).

1 Young people have better things to do than obsess on current affairs

2 The young have information coming at them every which way

3 Regulation makes for media forms which are especially boring to the young

4 Most news is repetitive and formulaic: it wouldn’t matter if there was less of it

5 The young feel excluded from the coded conversation which current affairs give them

6 The young aren’t uninformed, they’re ignorant (they have no context for political news)

7 The young like to look up to adults, but the media shows adults behaving like children

8 The young don’t like serious stuff, but don’t like being patronised either

9 Only a few people need to understand current affairs (the ignorant should vote for the wise)

10 The media is over-regulated now – let’s not use rules to make things better

* http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/newnews/
The conference discussed New News, Future News, an Ofcom report which suggests the young are consuming less news and current affairs than they used and are abandoning it at a faster rate even than older people. Still, it also shows that plenty of young people are still really quite interested. It also shows (page 62) that more young people than ever believe that it is important to keep up with currents affairs (most just don’t do it).