It is safe to say that this has been one of the most unusual elections in our nation’s history to date. Not only was it a very close race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, but almost every prediction for the election’s outcome was utterly wrong. For most high school students and people in today’s day and age, they get their information primarily from the Internet. Although there have been warnings about how “you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet,” unfortunately, that is exactly what most American citizens did. This made the outcome of the election more flabbergasting––even devastating to some.

When asked if they were shocked by the results of the election, 82.6% of Hackley students responded “yes.” Now, more than ever, students have little faith in the government, the Internet, and those who fooled them into thinking that Clinton would be the next President-elect. Many students feel the media did a poor job at realistically covering the odds of each candidate winning, or that the predictions were biased because it appears as if much of the nation (including the majority of Donald Trump supporters) believed it was socially unacceptable to support Trump. They simply decided to go with “the safe option” and state that they were voting for Clinton.

Senior Malcolm Roesser said, “I think that [the media] silenced a lot of Trump supporters, as a lot of times if they spoke out, they would be called racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. Furthermore, there were a lot of jokes going around about Trump and his campaign, which even further silenced Republicans who supported him, lest they speak out at the expense of being ridiculed.” Because of the negative publicity that Trump received and the polling models of who a “likely voter” was were wrong, many Hackley students were unprepared for the outcome of the election.

Other people agree with Malcolm’s statement. Senior Kristen Bringsjord said, “I believe that those who voted for [Trump] felt the need to hide their views in fear of being ‘othered’ by the Hackley or social media community.” While Hackley encourages an environment where people can openly voice their opinions, many conservatives felt as though they could not share their beliefs for fear of being ridiculed in this past election.

Senior Luisa Stalman, a more liberal student, felt comfortable standing behind Clinton’s platform. She feels that social media played a crucial role in the inaccurate coverage of both candidates. “From the spread of misinformation to the time dedicated to scandals rather than policy issues, social media and mainstream media definitely influenced the outcome of this election,” Luisa said.

Furthering Luisa’s point, there is evidence that a lot of “fake” news trended on Facebook when it removed human editors and only used its algorithm. Mark Zuckerberg denies that this tilted the election, but many speculate that it influenced the votes of high school students who get the majority of their information from social media.

Sophomore Philip Bonanno saw voters’ skepticism of the media as influential to the outcome of the election. “The media could have said literally anything and it would be immediately discredited because most of the public does not trust the media,” Philip said, “Personally, I don’t really think they took it as a joke. However, continuing to attack Trump (deservedly so) on the media helped him because it validated this idea of ‘us against them.’”