The news is always the same- horrifying weather disasters, devastating crime sprees and political debates that don’t seem to accomplish anything. Let’s face it, most of us would rather read the obituaries than watch the nightly news.

According to the Public Broadcasting Station, 27 percent of young people don’t have any source of news on an average day, and who can blame them. You open a newspaper and find there are record-breaking civilian losses in Afghanistan, and the violence in Syria is even worse.

There’s a reason news like this upsets us. That feeling of dread you get when you hear about an entire town left without food or water is actually brushing against that place in your chest where your sympathy used to be. Seeing it everyday weakens our sense of compassion. We just expect it at this point.

But we can’t just ignore it because we’re sick of hearing about it. Disregarding problems is what has made things as bad as they are now.

No one is willing to listen, so no one is going to try to make things better unless guilted into it with Sarah McLaughlin songs.

So as effective as wearing your world peace T-shirt has been for changing the planet, maybe we could tune into the news at 5 p.m. and actually start to make a difference.