Growing up, I played for my high school soccer team. Being in a small, conservative town in the south meant that we could pray before games and no one would really care. During our prayer one day, I have a distinct memory of asking God to bless the victims of the November 2015 Paris Attacks, as it had happened just the day before. I was surprised to have been met with eye-rolls, “Oh, come on!” and “We’re not talking about Paris, guys.” In all fairness, the intentions of our little prayer sessions were for the game. At the same time, though, the opposition felt more than a little close-minded and selfish. I remember thinking to myself at the time, “There’s a whole big world of suffering out there, and these girls are choosing to ignore it."

It’s never easy to read about gruesome injustices. When I worked as a research fellow covering human trafficking, I had to keep up with the news regarding this area. Some of the headlines were just about world leaders convening on ending modern slavery. The majority of my reading, however, was detailed and disturbing. It didn’t make for light reading, but I read it, nonetheless. Despite the dark subject matter, I enjoyed the process of conducting research. I became better informed through my research, and it provided me with information that I could do something with.

It always bothers me to hear people say “Oh, I don’t follow the news, there’s too much negativity." How difficult it must be to read about suffering while in the meantime, some people are in the world actually experiencing it. This mentality also fails to recognize the purpose of the news. In a Kardashian influenced society, a lot of people mistakenly believe that the news exists for its entertainment value. This is clearly skewed. The news media exists to inform, not entertain its audience. Of course, no one wants to read about something that they don’t care about. We should care about the world around us, and when I say "the world," I mean outside of Hollywood.

Reading about refugees or religious persecution doesn’t make me Gandhi. I'm not saying that becoming informed of social injustices must be matched with an act of heroism. I don't claim to be the most knowledgeable, news-reading person on the planet. With this being said, I am open to increasing my awareness, and in my opinion, that's what matters the most.

What I'm trying to get at here is that ignoring the news doesn’t make it stop. If victims of slavery, rape and bombings have the courage to share their stories, then shouldn’t we have the courage to listen?