The Pew Research Center has published a study coming to the awe-inspiring conclusion that US adults really like tweeting about politics. Say it ain’t so!
To be more specific, their findings reveal that about one third of all tweets published by US citizens from the ages of fifty and above are politically oriented. This may not be the most surprising of conclusions to arrive at (in other news, water seems to be wet), but hey: props to The Pew Research Center for digging into cold hard fact instead of worn out zingers from an online tech magazine. It’s hardly news that so much of an adult American’s conversation revolves around discussing such topics, for any myriad of reasons. To kick us off, adults in general across the world seem to bond over politics more than anything else. Perhaps it’s because of newspapers being a dominant form of casual entertainment in their early lives, or even more so because there were only so many channels that a TV could air back in the day. Then again, I’d argue that due to the far-reaching newsfeeds that social media bombards us with on a daily basis, our current youth’s much more politically aware and conscious; perhaps even to the detriment of their mental health as a whole.
The other reason conversation may revolve around politics so much is that US politics, at least in the last few years, have been a form of entertainment on their own. I may not be a hundred percent serious when I make this statement, but watching Trump’s rise to presidency and the following years has been sort of like watching a mass highway vehicular accident. It’s terrible, sure, but how does one look away? On a more serious note, the (former) presidency has managed to evoke a modicum of discourse that other topics haven’t quite mustered up. Between BLM, KKK rallies, and Democrats & Republicans, suddenly everyone had an opinion that just needed to be expressed. The youth was a big part of this online conversation, sure, but older individuals had a piece of their mind to give as well.
Perhaps it’s even due to a sense of isolation that Americans in their fifties and above feel. Baby boomers are often labelled as having sown the seeds for much of the late-stage capitalistic nightmares that currently plague the USA. While there’s definitely some truth to that statement, the average elderly individual was just someone trying to do the best they could for both themselves and their families. The fact that they could afford college tuition on two part-time jobs when our generation couldn’t do the same on two full-time ones is perhaps the fault of a different source entirely. However, the only platform that such individuals can choose to defend themselves is social media.
I mean, I’m still not excusing the average boomer’s sense of superiority as they tell the modern generation to get a job, or show up everywhere. But hey, online political discussion is still much better than making jokes about how nagging someone’s wife is. We get it, you wanted a divorce but couldn’t because of socio-political climate and your own innate fear of being alone, hush now.
Read next: Alarming Research Claims There Are Over 24 Billion Usernames And Passwords Have Been Leaked On The Dark Web
To be more specific, their findings reveal that about one third of all tweets published by US citizens from the ages of fifty and above are politically oriented. This may not be the most surprising of conclusions to arrive at (in other news, water seems to be wet), but hey: props to The Pew Research Center for digging into cold hard fact instead of worn out zingers from an online tech magazine. It’s hardly news that so much of an adult American’s conversation revolves around discussing such topics, for any myriad of reasons. To kick us off, adults in general across the world seem to bond over politics more than anything else. Perhaps it’s because of newspapers being a dominant form of casual entertainment in their early lives, or even more so because there were only so many channels that a TV could air back in the day. Then again, I’d argue that due to the far-reaching newsfeeds that social media bombards us with on a daily basis, our current youth’s much more politically aware and conscious; perhaps even to the detriment of their mental health as a whole.
The other reason conversation may revolve around politics so much is that US politics, at least in the last few years, have been a form of entertainment on their own. I may not be a hundred percent serious when I make this statement, but watching Trump’s rise to presidency and the following years has been sort of like watching a mass highway vehicular accident. It’s terrible, sure, but how does one look away? On a more serious note, the (former) presidency has managed to evoke a modicum of discourse that other topics haven’t quite mustered up. Between BLM, KKK rallies, and Democrats & Republicans, suddenly everyone had an opinion that just needed to be expressed. The youth was a big part of this online conversation, sure, but older individuals had a piece of their mind to give as well.
Perhaps it’s even due to a sense of isolation that Americans in their fifties and above feel. Baby boomers are often labelled as having sown the seeds for much of the late-stage capitalistic nightmares that currently plague the USA. While there’s definitely some truth to that statement, the average elderly individual was just someone trying to do the best they could for both themselves and their families. The fact that they could afford college tuition on two part-time jobs when our generation couldn’t do the same on two full-time ones is perhaps the fault of a different source entirely. However, the only platform that such individuals can choose to defend themselves is social media.
I mean, I’m still not excusing the average boomer’s sense of superiority as they tell the modern generation to get a job, or show up everywhere. But hey, online political discussion is still much better than making jokes about how nagging someone’s wife is. We get it, you wanted a divorce but couldn’t because of socio-political climate and your own innate fear of being alone, hush now.
Read next: Alarming Research Claims There Are Over 24 Billion Usernames And Passwords Have Been Leaked On The Dark Web
