By MADISON CRAMER

While many people still watch the news each night, or as often as they can, others are far too busy to sit down in front of a television for more than a few minutes. Thanks to social media and technology, we no longer have to do this.

Most news sources have apps for our smartphones, and many offer the helpful “push notifications.” This allows people to receive breaking news updates directly on the home screen of their phone and thus saves people tons of time.

Personally, I love receiving these notifications almost every day. It makes it so I don’t even have to check the app itself, which, in my case, is CNN, to learn that day’s news. When I’m far too busy to read through the app, these one-to-two-sentence notifications are extremely helpful.

These notifications are also useful for learning something new. I’ll often receive a notification on a news story that I didn’t know anything about or that I didn’t know existed.

They keep me informed throughout the day, without even having to push a button. We clearly have it easy these days, but with that comes a new level of knowledge. Thanks to these advances in social media, we’re able to learn so much more about the world and about current events than we’ve ever been able to before.