They’ve grown up online. So why are our kids not better at detecting misinformation?
thestar.com
They’ve grown up online. So why are our kids not better at detecting misinformation?::Recent studies have shown teens are more susceptible than adults. It’s a problem researchers, teachers and parents are only beginning to understand.
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I kinda wondered how true this is, I'm gen Z and my friends are and I would say were pretty good at dismissing outragous claims expessly political ones.
Everyone should remember that no one is immune to this stuff. Anyone who truly believes that they are immune to is probably more susceptible to it. No one is right 100% of the time.
As a generation, we don't all share the same headspace. What you or I might be good at spotting might not be so easy for someone else to spot. I would love to agree with you that our generation as a whole is good at seeing this stuff, but I've also seen some pretty shocking things over the last 5 years. Some people will believe things blindly, if it makes them feel better than someone else. Some people have even been taught to do so.
As much as I love gen Z, I think that a lot of people within it really struggle with empathy and critical thinking. Unfortunately, I think that those missing traits also make them much more susceptible to believing random things. They give the rest of us a bad name when they do that, and I really hope that they seriously work on verifying information, if nothing else.
We need to do much better, overall, if we want to legitimately claim that we're better for this stuff as a generation. We need to properly hold people accountable if/when bad stuff happens, especially if those bad things happen because someone didn't bother to verify something before they acted.
Almost all of us know how to use the internet ffs, it should really be easy to just take the 10 seconds to search something.