In the past several weeks, Facebook Live has tapped into its true potential, making it more than just a fun toy for moms touting Chewbacca masks. Facebook Live is the new avenue for live news coverage.

Facebook Live was already set up to be a way for many people to share the same experience. Simply by virtue of it being available on Facebook, the service is open to over a billion people. That, combined with the fact that anyone can use Facebook Live, made it a potential hit for the average user trying to reach a huge audience without the help of promotions or a TV network.

But the feature didn’t really rise to practical prominence until people started using it to film national events. When a sniper killed 5 Dallas police officers at a protest two weeks ago, the way most people saw what was going on was not through live TV coverage of the protest, but through a Facebook livestream of the actual shooting itself. The footage was shocking and affected the entire country. On a less tragic note, this week, attendees at both the RNC and DNC National conventions are using Facebook Live to cover the events for the country at large.

What these two example show is that Facebook Live is incredibly effective at spreading the word on national and important events while they are still happening. It is much more gripping than any TV broadcast because it is candid and unedited. It also offers a wider variety of viewpoints on the issue at hand, as anyone with a Facebook account and a smartphone can livestream an event.

The Millennial generation favors the smartphone to any other type of device, so Facebook Live is a perfect fit for news coverage of the future. In addition, both Facebook and Twitter have begun experimenting with livestreaming major sporting events. It seems that livestreaming on social media will almost certainly replace live TV coverage in the near future.