Media Study Finds ‘Age of Indifference’

Since Watergate and Vietnam, young adults in America have come to know and care less about public affairs than any other generation in the past half century, a study of polling results dating back to the 1940s has concluded.

Americans 18 to 30 are far less likely than young people a generation ago to read newspapers. They also watch less news on television, are less able to identify frequent news makers and register less interest in public events.

These same people are better educated, more likely to report that they are reading a book and more likely to use computers than Americans over 50. Yet of all age groups, those over 50 are most interested in public affairs.

These are the assertions of a study entitled “The Age of Indifference,” sponsored by Times Mirror, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and owner of several other television, newspaper and electronic publishing enterprises.

The results, the report suggests, include declining voter rates, a change in the historical impact of education, a sense that the information age has turned people away from news and the development of new forms of news media.

From the 1940s until the mid-1970s, public polling results showed that differences in the interest and knowledge between generations were generally marginal. On many issues, those under age 30 were better informed than those over 50.

In the mid-1970s, the Roper Organization first identified a decline in interest among young people as that generation apparently lost faith with leadership and turned inward. Since then, this new survey contends, the Watergate generation has remained less interested in public affairs.

But what is most dramatic is that the generation that followed the baby boom, those people now aged 18 to 30, are drastically less involved, knowing less and caring less than any previous generation.

In general, the Times Mirror report suggested, young people today are 20% less likely than middle-aged-and-older Americans to know even basic facts about current events. The “credibility gap” of leadership during Watergate and the Vietnam war has given way to a “knowledge gap” in the 1990s.

The political fallout is clear in voting patterns. “Young people’s voting participation has declined in every presidential election since 1972,” from 50% to only 36% in 1988 for Americans 18 to 24, the report found.

One factor that distinguishes the new generation under 30 from the Watergate generation, however, is that its turning away is not based on any political disillusionment. In fact, young people are actually less critical of business and government now than older Americans, the study found.

Young people, said Andrew Kohut, who conducted the study for Times Mirror, are not so much disillusioned as indifferent, displaying “a failure to find public events compelling.”

Catering to this new generation has spawned a new kind of news media, offering lighter fare and “infotainment,” a hybrid of information and entertainment. That may explain, the report suggests, why People magazine and tabloid TV shows such as “Geraldo” and “A Current Affair” have higher concentrations of young audiences, while evening newscasts generally attract older viewers.

Several factors may explain this apparent decline in interest in public events. The inward turn of the Vietnam generation may have influenced the next generation. Education may have become less effective at making people concerned with public affairs. People may retain less information about public affairs when they learn from television than did the generation that relied most on newspapers.

A lack of compelling issues in America since Watergate and Vietnam also may have made public affairs seem less involving. The absence of a military draft may have made public events, particularly international politics, seem less relevant to young Americans. And technology has given a new generation of Americans more choices about how to use their time.

The report found a few stories that attracted similar interest among young and old. Those included the invasion of Panama, the Challenger disaster and air strikes against Libya. News focused on youth also had similar appeal.