Looking at articles that make the front page in various newspapers, there’s an increasingly noticeable trend regarding what kind of news is dominating the interests of people nowadays.  Negative news has already gained an iron-tight grip on social media, encouraging the continuous devaluation of human moral standards.

Today, more than half of the articles that rack up the most reads on some of the most influential news-providing sites contain negative connotations in their headlines that lead to even more depressing content. “Iran’s Leader, Denouncing Holocaust, Stirs Dispute,” “Detroit Spent Billions Extra on Pensions,” and “Power Failure Disrupts Metro North’s New Haven Line” are just a couple that have made the top ten most-read articles as of September 26, 2013.

Sophomore Julius Chai commented, “Negative news is a huge source for open discussion on the morality of the event! The general public prefers these types of open discussion in order for them to express their opinions on a particular subject.”

On the other hand, more uplifting stories commonly get overlooked. Websites that provide exclusively positive news don’t receive nearly as much attention and publicity as ones that unveil bad or embarrassing sides of humans and the society that they are a part of. This uneven balance of information that the public is receiving causes growing disapproval for the current generation.

Freshman Kimia Badakhshan said, “[If there was more positive news then] I think people would be more grateful of the society they live in and I think that they would be more positive themselves, like looking on the bright side of things.”

If the more well-known news sources took the time to give recognition to people who actually deserve it, that would not only destroy the pretense that all of society is corrupt, but more people would gain an incentive to try harder and strive towards accomplishing something beneficial for once. It comes as no surprise that the way people seek attention is by doing reckless things when the media puts so much emphasis and focus so much attention on the handful of people who make complete idiots out of themselves.

The only way to change this unhealthy mindset is for popular news-providing sources to divert attention away from all the negativity that floats around.  While it’s true that we as a whole should not be ignorant of the issues that occur in our society, social media should not make it a goal to completely obliterate any traces of decency in the process.