User:Evangelos Giakoumatos/Age of Indifference

Age of Indifference

The Age of Indifference was a 1990 study conducted by the Times Mirror Company's Center for People and the Press.

The Age of Indifference study surveyed what topics in the news captured the most interest of the general audience. The full title of the study was "The Age of Indifference: A Study of Young Americans and How They View the News." The Times Mirror Company's Center for People and the Press is now called The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

Findings on Voting Participation
From 1972 to 1988

18 to 24 year-olds: voting participation dropped from 50% (1972) to 36% (1988)

25 to 44 year-olds: voting participation dropped from 63% to 54%

45 to 64 year-olds: voting participation held steady across the years, at around 68%

65 and older: voting participation saw a modest increase from 64% to 69%

Findings on the Most Memorable News Events of the 1980s
People under 30 years of age

Most Memorable: The Challenger Disaster (1986)

Second Place: The San Francisco Earthquake

Third Place: The Texas Girl that was rescued from a well

Only 42% of this group paid attention to the historic upheavals in eastern Europe, including the landmark fall of the Berlin Wall

Only 11% followed President Bush's summit meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev

Conclusions Drawn
The concluding statement of the study noted, "The ultimate irony ... is that the Information Age has spawned such an uninformed and uninvolved population"