A few days ago I read this viral Tweet:
"Fox News did to our parents what they thought video games would do to us."
It hits an interesting point that highlights the widening gap between generations.
Replace Fox News with TV and videogames with the Internet, and the gap becomes apparent:
“TV did to our parents what they thought the Internet would do to us”
If in the past televised news were one of the main and most reliable sources of news to stay up to date in a rapidly changing world; now they're all but a source of entertainment.
And so, many of our parents—baby boomers and Gen Xers own more TVs than Millenials—got stuck in the world of CNN and Fox News. They got trapped in a kind of dystopic and myopic digital Disney World.
This is not to say that Millenials and Gen Z are exempt from falling prey to TV and digital entertainment. We have Netflix, YouTube, and Facebook. Fake news abounds on the Internet.
But our parents grew up trusting TV and their hosts. And they raised us teaching us to distrust the Internet and social media.
So now, paradoxically, it's up to us to explain to them the perils of TV and teaching them how the Internet—with all its issues—can be a more trustworthy and richer source of news, knowledge, and, of course, entertainment.
It's time for us to teach them to turn off the TV and pay attention to the real world.