Soundbites have plagued the media for decades, slowly reducing media literacy to the point where some people don’t even consider looking for the context of where a quote comes from. At least on the news, the quote is still coming directly from the person. The introduction of TikTok has allowed anyone to retell the news, without citing anything, as if it is fact. There are people who hear the newest updates on wars or the economy from some teenager in their bedroom. Someone taking AP Government in high school can confidently misinterpret a Supreme Court ruling and have their post go viral.
These soundbites misconstrue who should be listened to when it comes to the media. When the COVID-19 pandemic had the world quarantined and throughout the last few US Presidential elections, many chose to listen to people without knowledge. This can be dangerous when people’s lives are at stake and can actively harm people when the information is not only unfounded but against our best interests. Sometimes this isn’t even on purpose, people without knowledge are just saying what they believe to be true. But this can cause a lot of distrust when it is most important that we are making informed decisions.
There’s a lot of misinformation swirling around on the internet, but sometimes it is just the simplest option to hear more information in less time through TikTok. So if people are going to continue to get their news in the shortest form possible, what can we do to make sure we are truly getting to understand what is important?
The introduction of the soundbite was not nearly the very beginning of our shortened attention spans, but it marks a clear shift in the transmission of news. Just as newspapers transitioned to radio and radio transitioned to television and then to social media, we are seeing another change happen. TikTok, however, has only built upon that by taking a day’s worth of news and stuffing it into a minute or less. It’s always important to fact-check the news: find the whole quote, learn the context and come to your own understanding. We learn to look at different sources, but sometimes it can be important to look at the original material, whether that be a press release, a speech or a new piece of legislation.
As much as social media would lead us to believe, we do not need to know everything about everything all the time. It is okay to not be an expert on every social and political change. So in watching these videos, we can decide what it is that we do care about to look more into and then take the rest of the information with a grain of salt.
It is just important that we don’t become complacent because while we don’t need to know everything, it is still important that we have a general understanding of the world around us. TikTok certainly makes the news more entertaining, but the world doesn’t have to be entertaining. In fact, I would argue that we are actually worse off when politics is “entertaining.” We need to be better about engaging with the “boring” aspects of the world so that people in power do not take advantage of sensationalism.