In Brief: Where People Get Their News; What Gives Away AI Writing

Teenagers find news on social media, while adults still prefer television and newspapers, research from the Media Insight Project finds. 

Among teens ages 13–17, most (57%) get news from social media at least daily, whereas adults 65 and older usually turn to TV (74%). Adults engage with hard news, while teens consume lifestyle news. 

For local news, adults 65 and older are more likely than younger Americans to rely on TV, radio or newspapers, the research found. Teens ages 13–17 are more likely to get local news from influencers or independent creators (48%, versus 23% for adults 65 and older). 

Fewer than half of teens and adults express strong confidence in any news source. Local news is viewed as most trustworthy, followed by national news and independent creators.

The Media Insight Project is a collaboration of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the American Press Institute, Northwestern University and the University of Maryland.

AI Writing Giveaway ‘It’s Not That, It’s This’ Negates Intended Meaning

The “it’s not X, it’s Y” sentence structure popping up in LinkedIn posts lately is a sign that artificial intelligence wrote the text. 

But as the academic website The Conversation reports, this annoying, negating sentence construction distorts how people process information by anchoring the reader’s attention on what something is not.

In a 1987 experiment, psychologist Daniel Wegner asked participants not to think about a white bear. The result was that they all thought about a white bear. The mental effort of trying to push the concept away made it stick in people’s minds.

In addition to causing readers to remember what you want them to forget, the “it’s not that, it’s this” device might be bad for writing overall. A 2024 study found that when people use AI in their writing, their individual pieces may be more polished, but writing in general starts to sound the same. 

A good rule: Always write what something is — not what it isn’t.

Mainstream Fashion Brands Strut Met Gala Red Carpet

On the Met Gala red carpet on May 4, two fashion brands seemed out of place: Gap and Zara. 

As The Wall Street Journal reports, model and media personality Kendall Jenner wore a gown by GapStudio and designed by Zac Posen, a premium line the company debuted last year. Rock star Stevie Nicks wore a Zara gown.

The garments didn’t come off the rack. Both were created by renowned fashion designers. Still, that two mall brands found prime placement on A-list celebrities during fashion’s biggest night showed which companies can afford to pay for the spotlight. 

“Budgets have been slashed,” said Todd Shemarya, chief executive of a talent agency that represents celebrities for brand endorsements.

Gucci, which has been in a sales slump for years, dressed two stars for the event — the same number as “fast fashion” giant Zara.

The annual Met Gala raises funds for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 

Does Watching Art Films Inspire Creativity? 

For an extra jolt of creativity this summer movie season, consider visiting an arthouse theater.

Beyond moving us emotionally, watching art films might spark our own creativity, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have found. In an experiment, people who viewed artistic short films showed measurable increases in creative thinking, compared with those who watched amusing videos.

Art pushes us “into broader and more abstract ways of thinking and perceiving,” said Madeleine Gross, who led the study in the school’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. “Those same processes appear to support creative thinking.”

Participants were randomly assigned to watch either an experimental, animated short film, or a compilation of humorous home videos like those often seen on social media. Afterward, each participant completed two tasks designed to measure their creative thinking.

People who watched the art films exhibited what the researchers call a “conceptual expansion” — a loosening of the boundaries between mental categories that characterizes creative thinking. According to the study, seeing art appears to temporarily shift the viewer toward a more receptive, exploratory mindset.