The term is “clickbait” and it has desensitized humanity to dramatic headlines. The idea of clickbait is to draw in an audience to click on whatever the source is with a short but powerful phrase. Upon scrolling through Snapchat news sites, I found that one common word many channels use in their titles is “this.” The idea here is to avoid giving away the shiny gold nugget that is the main idea of that particular article or video. For example, on CBC News’ Snapchat some titles in their list of videos are “This homework assignment had the school saying sorry” and “Science suggests doing this can help with depression” and so many more. While these stories may have been interesting, are news sources running out of ways to draw in a younger audience? Branching out to the media has proven to be beneficial for many news sources, but the use of clickbait might not be as effective. I speak for myself in saying I lose more interest each time I see a news source using it, but struggle to think of how else they can draw in a younger crowd.
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