To elaborate, about how old were you when you really started paying attention to current events in the media, especially politics?
Did something prompt you to start paying more attention?
When I say “care” and “pay attention” I basically mean having a pretty good general idea, not necessarily being an expert regarding what’s going on in the world for the day.
If you were to try to convince someone to care more about the news/politics, what would be your biggest selling points?
It started when I was 18 and read 1984 for the first time, it scared the Hell out of me. Then I was dumb enough to listen to Glenn Beck and became more paranoid. Then I talked to a Comparative Religion professor and he told me that foreign nations were working on EMPs that could devastate the nations infrastructure.
Then I started college and stopped paying attention apart from the hilarity that is Cracked, The Onion, and not hilariously RT.
Now I have little interest coming back. I suppose gay marriage being legalized kind of had something to do with, and just reintroducing myself to this site in general.
I was 9 years old in 1972 when the first reports about the break-in at the Watergate Hotel started coming out. I was fascinated, and have retained a strong interest in politics ever since, although my choice of news sources has varied considerably over the years.
I think the only way to get someone interested in the news/politics is to find something that they care about that is affected, and share those stories. Telling someone that they should care is never going to work; they have to want to know more about a subject, and look for that information. Fortunately with today’s vast media there’s plenty of news to go around.
I was also 9 years old in 1972, and Watergate also lured me in. I would watch the PBS news round tables every week and also read the front section of the local newspaper. Since I lived Dallas at the time, home of GOP-slanted news, I was firmly convinced that Richard Milhous Nixon was getting a raw deal. It wasn’t until I read Hunter S Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail” that I started to politically redirect.
One day when I was 11 years old, the daily newspaper was not delivered. The next day also saw no delivery, so I said something to my mother about it and she told me she had cancelled the subscription because she didn’t read it and she was trying to save money (things were tight for us, just then). I asked if I could pay for it*, she agreed, so I called and started a subscription in my name. She didn’t realize I was reading all the sections cover-to-cover and had been for a couple of years.
When I try to convince someone to care more about the news/politics, I always use the same selling points: they are taking your money, you should at least know what they are doing with it, especially if they are doing things you don’t like because you can’t change things if you don’t know things.
*I was mowing lawns and delivering newspapers to make money since I was about 9 or 10.
I started following the national news in college. But didn’t really focus on it that closely until my mid thirties.
The news hit me the hardest the night desert storm began bombing on 17 January 1991. I broke down crying and didn’t know why. I eventually realized it triggered old memories of seeing my dad ship out to Viet Nam. I was eight and mom watched the news every night to find out if there was fighting near his airfield. I repressed a lot of that anxiety until seeing hundreds and hundreds of our airman in the skies over Iraq.
Since desert storm, the middle east conflict has kept me riveted to the news. I read the US and BBC coverage.
It was gradual, but my interest probably took a jump around age 14 or 15 (1969-70). I remember having no real opinion about the 1968 US Presidential election.
Did most people here get assignments to read the newspaper for their 9th grade Civics class? We got a pop quiz a couple times a week. The teacher took the questions from the headlines on the front page. He also discussed political stories using the newspaper.
That was the first time I had ever actually read a newspaper for content. Before that it was just for the comics and movie theater listings.
From a very young age (10 at least) I read a few science-related magazines, National Geographic in particular. Some was more current events or politics-related than others, but I’d pretty much always had some exposure.
In high school, I started to follow the news a little bit. I remember the Clinton/Bush debates that happened a couple years before I could have voted.
Since then, I have always followed it to some degree.
I’ve Always been interested in politics… and could hold my own in dinner conversations with family & neighbors about politics since I was 10.
In 7th grade I wrote a paper on how the possible election of Ronald Reagan would irreparably damage life as we knew it in America because of the age and health of the existing Supreme Court Justices and the political slant of who he’d likely replace them with.
I got a “C” with a red ink note saying that “…it couldn’t Possibly get as bad as all that.”
Its decades later and I STILL want that grade upped to the “A” it deserved.
In college I wrote an editorial about being a first-time presidential voter in 2000, when I was 21. I paid a bit of attention to the '92 and '96 elections because they were very “pop culture” (Rock the Vote!) but I did set myself as a Democrat for realsies when I was 21.
I’ll be honest and say that watching *The Daily Show *is my version of “caring about the news/politics” and I’ve been doing that since about 2000.
I just recently this year became more involved in city politics. It’s a friggin mess.