In an age of information, teens are less informed than ever. From their polling data, the Pew Research Center has concluded that ours is a generation that “knew less, cared less, and read newspapers less.” One possible reason for such a paradox is a common misconception: newspapers are just for old people. 

There was one moment in particular that showed how commonplace this belief has become. I was minding my own business, reading a Wall Street Journal article, when a friend asked me, “you read articles?” I answered yes, and his next question shocked me into silence: “why?” It was as if I had told him that I hated ice cream. He was genuinely confused. In my mind I was screaming, why not? But then I began to understand: with things like social media and entertainment apps that distill the news into a more digestible form, reading 1000-word articles would seem to be a waste of time. 

According to a survey by Common Sense Media, teens get around half of their news from Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Accompanying this trend is a decrease in the amount of teens who consume print media. In the 1990s, 33% of tenth graders read a newspaper; in 2016, only 16% did. So what? If the only problem is that teens swapped screens for paper, just get some blue light glasses. But the switch in mediums represents so much more, as it is hurting our ability to be informed and make good decisions. 

The same survey found that 60% of social media-based news comes from celebrities and online influencers, as opposed to the accounts of news organizations. Furthermore, such news typically pops up in a recommended feed designed around the user’s preferences. So not only are teens basing their understanding of current events on the opinions of celebrities who are paid to entertain and often have no background in politics or journalism, they are being algorithmically fed a constant loop of news that is biased one way or another, depending on where the user falls on the political spectrum, with little to no overlap. 

It’s no surprise, then, that teens who rely on social media for news lack a basic understanding of current events. Nearly two thirds of those surveyed said that news organizations helped them understand current events. In contrast, just over half said the same of social media, with one in five teens saying it made them more confused about politics. Similarly, data from the Pew Research Center shows that 41% of those who consumed print media had a “high knowledge” of current events, compared to just 17% of those who consumed social media-based news. And, of course, most respondents in the latter category were under 30.

As if dumbing-down teens’ understanding of current events wasn't bad enough, social media-based news also makes them more likely to believe false information. How else to explain the fact that just one in four young Republicans believe Biden was the rightful winner of the 2020 election? Or the fact that those who spend time on social media are considerably more likely to perceive racism in their own lives and on a national scale than those who don’t? Indeed, another aspect of social media’s sensationalism comes into play here. Researcher Vivian Roese calls it “accidental media hype.” What that means is that even if a given thing rarely happens–police shootings, or voter fraud, for example–the nature of social media is to allow users to decide its newsworthiness through likes and shares. In this way, one misplaced ballot or one racist incident has the power to change the country’s perception of key issues, even if the facts tell a different story–and they often do. 

At best, using social media as a news source prevents teens from seeing an issue in its entirety, limiting their general knowledge of current events and, by extension, their ability to make good decisions–like who to vote for. Which is a serious problem, because teens have only become more politically active as they have grown less informed. A Harvard Youth poll found that the share of teens who consider themselves to be politically active jumped from 24% in 2008 to 36% in 2020. Just what we need: more dumb activists and politicians.  

At worst, social media-based news is downright dangerous. The 18-year-old who shot and killed ten people in a racist attack on a Buffalo supermarket in May said he was “radicalized” on the fringe corners of Reddit and YouTube. Notwithstanding the obvious bias of social media fact-checkers, which have been known to make boneheaded moves like censoring an article on Hunter Biden’s laptop that was later vindicated by the FBI, their existence is tied up in the fact that social media is a dumping ground for all manner of conspiracy theories and disinformation.

So, if social media is a poor news source, what makes a good news source? Any news organization that abides by the classic elements of journalism–such as a commitment to truth, an emotional detachment from those being covered, and an emphasis on verification–is an improvement over social media. Although newspapers and cable news channels share many such qualities, here’s why I think newspapers are the better of the two options: 

First, newspapers are much more detailed in their reporting, as they have until the morning after news breaks to publish an article. Second, American news channels have all but transitioned their coverage from fact-based reporting to opinion or “news analysis”, while newspapers can be counted on to maintain a clear distinction between the news and opinion pages. And third, newspapers devote more journalistic resources to investigative reporting, allowing them to expose abuses of power great and small in a way that broadcast reporters simply cannot. 

(The BBC, a U.K.-based station covering world politics, is a notable exception to the above rules. More broadly, when it comes to developing stories or special events like presidential inaugurations and debates, nothing beats live coverage). 

That’s not to say that newspapers are unbiased–to the contrary, they have suffered just as much as cable news from the effects of political polarization. The difference is that the mandate and structure of newspapers is less prone to political partisanship. Reading a variety of publications is vital to forming a broad knowledge base. Read the Wall Street Journal for business-focused reporting on current events that informs and equips more than it dazzles. Read the New York Times for a better understanding of the cultural progressivism currently sweeping the nation, as well as fascinating, well-written pieces on politics and art. Read magazines like the conservative National Review and the liberal New Yorker for fun, editorialized content. And so on. 

There really is no limit to the knowledge one can gain from reading newspapers. The same cannot be said of social media. Even if one were to toggle between conservative and liberal accounts, the result would be a caricature of politics based on out-of-context videos and short posts where nuance is rare and outrage is the norm. Our generation deserves better than that.