We all know how important it is to stay up-to-date with current events. With what is going on in the world right now, it is more important than ever. However, it can definitely be challenging to stay up to date when there’s a lot of other things on your mind (school, work, extracurriculars, clubs, etc.). Thankfully, there are ways to stay up to date with the news that won’t take a huge chunk of your day.
Here are four quick and easy ways to stay up-to-date on current events:
1. Watching the news on T.V.
This one is obvious, but it’s true! Turning on the T.V. for fifteen minutes in the morning to start your day with a quick intake of news is a great way to stay up to date. I personally like to make my breakfast and then sit down and enjoy it while I watch the news for a bit and switch news channels a few times too before locking myself in my room all day for classes. It’s always tempting to grab your phone in the morning and scroll through Instagram or Tik Tok instead, but there will always be time for that later.
2. Podcasts
Sometimes I like to switch things up a bit and listen to a podcast instead. There are numerous podcasts that are super informative, such as The Daily, Up First by NPR, and The Journal. My personal favorite is NPR’s Up First, which is a daily recap of the most important news stories in just fifteen minutes. This is a source of news I also utilize in the morning before classes so that I can get a sense of what the latest stories are before beginning the rest of my day.
3. Social Media
The simplest way I stay up to date with current events is with social media. In today’s day and age, everyone uses social media to some extent, so there’s no doubt that it’s a source of news. The best way to use social media for news updates is by following different news outlets and journalists on Instagram and Twitter, though I tend to use Twitter more than Instagram for news intake.
4. Talking to Family Members
To elaborate a bit, talking to your family members when you’re all together, like at the dinner table, can be a way to find out about some current events or smaller happenings in the news that you had no idea about. Personally, this stems from the fact that each member of my family has such different schedules and does their news intake differently and gets their news from different sources as well. Sometimes I bring up something I heard about or saw that neither of my parents had any idea about and vice-versa. This is usually informal and unplanned, but oftentimes very informative! Talk to your family members and see what they’ve heard about!