I remember being in the 5th grade when it happened and thinking "Why is everyone freaking out so much about this? Like, sure it sucks but I see stuff like this when my mom watches the news all the time. What's different about it? I mean, there aren't even any tanks involved in this"
What I had seen on the news was most likely the various post-Yugoslavia conflicts in the Balkans throughout the 1990's and into the 2000's, although there were probably other conflicts around the world that my 10-year-old mind just filed away as "wars are happening in far-off places". A lot of my classmates at the time were Bosnians who were displaced in the Bosnian wars.
There were 2,977 deaths from the 9/11 attacks, including the attackers. For reference, there were 42,196 fatalities from car accidents in 2001. That means 9/11 was less than a full month's worth of car crashes. Imagine if we put anywhere near as much money and energy into making automobiles safer as we did to bomb brown people in unrelated countries for the next 20 years afterwards.
The attacks were not sensationalized because of the human loss, but the economic loss. Kill hundreds of thousands of poor people and no one bats an eye. Kill a couple of rich people and the whole media empire makes sure we stop at nothing to bomb unrelated countries in response.