And The Children Shall Lead......I hope Not

Some support for my long held theory that for many of us, the internet isn't necessarily broadening our scope and educating us. No, it's more like confusing us in deciphering what is news and what is pretend news. You know, like that garbage that appears all over social welfare sites like Face book.  Stanford researchers evaluated students' ability to assess information sources and described the results as "dismaying," "bleak" and "a threat to democracy." The nonsense and propaganda many believe often has its origin on line.

According to the Stanford Study, children and young adults have a difficult time discerning between fake news and real news circulating on the internet. 7,800  middle school, high school and some college students across 12 U.S. states were examined in the study   "Many assume that because young people are fluent in social media they are equally savvy about what they find there," the researchers wrote. "Our work shows the opposite." I see that with adults too.

Many adults, on line and off, can not differentiate between truth and deliberate deceit, things like "Trump is a racist".  Not only do people have trouble discriminating among the stories they read, but even after they are shown clear evidence of the truthfulness or falsity of  information they read on line, they refuse to accept the facts presented to them.

As for the kiddies out there. The Stanford study concluded that:

Middle school students have a hard time distinguishing between native advertising, which looks like news articles, and actual news stories.
Many high school students couldn't distinguish between a fake news source and a real news source on Face book.
Only a quarter of those surveyed knew what the "blue check mark" (which is supposed to indicate a real news source) meant.
More than 80% of middle school students believed that advertiser content was a real news story.
High school students accepted photographs as presented, without verifying them as real.
Many high schoolers could not tell the difference between a real news story and a fake Face book posting.
A professional appearance could easily persuade students that a site was neutral and authoritative.
Young people tended to accept information as presented even without supporting evidence or citations.
Most college students failed to detect bias from tweets by activist groups.
Many college students could not tell the difference between a mainstream source and a fringe source.

Wow! These are the future voters and decision makers in society. They have had their brains addled by the technology they worship. Where do we go from here to save the minds of the youth? I'm not sure, but pulling the plug on some of those electronic devices might be a good start.