By: Jada Law, Follow South Jersey Intern
SOUTH JERSEY — During Keiah Welch’s first semester of college, her significant other at the time introduced her to the various conspiracy videos he had been watching.
“He would watch and feel like it changed the way he looked at the world,” stated Welch, “I would watch one of the episodes with him, and thought it was the dumbest thing I’ve seen on earth.”
Seeing him become so immersed in this form of content made her realize that he does not use his critical thinking skills to discern the validity of these videos.
“There’s a level of ignorance that you need to have to enjoy those videos,” said Welch, “because when you actually do know how things work in the world and you watch those videos you question how [the creator of the videos] came to this conclusion.”
The spread of misinformation on social media platforms has been seen to become a problem. According to a study done by USC Today, “just 15% of the most habitual news sharers in the research were responsible for spreading about 30% to 40% of the fake news.”
A lot of misinformation spread might have to do more with the people consuming rather than the people creating it. Just like Welch many have started to take notice of the pattern of how fake news gets popular.
College of Dupage student, Janelle Manuel said, “Whenever I think about mis-spreading information I think of celebrities. Because everyone thinks they know so much about them and make up these conclusions but, they’re people too.”
Augustana College student Destiny Missell explained how she saw a lot of misinformation on social media this past election about the candidates.
“There’s misinformation about their character on both ends, some of it may be true and some of it may not be true,” stated Missell. “And their agendas are all misguided and reworded to fit others’ perspectives in order to gain or lose voters.”
Missell went on further to expand on how misinformation affects society as a whole.
“It polarized society and separated people into different groups depending on their personal beliefs,” she said.
Many have started to take steps to prevent getting fooled by fake news.
“I don’t really just go on social media and believe everything I see,” stated Joliet Junior College student, Peter Hassan. “You have to go to government official databases to receive information because they are 9 times out of 10 always accurate.”
“Just having discernment, critical thinking, and context. There’s so many tools that you can use to not be swayed by whoever’s in front of you,” Welch stated
Missell went on to say that she tries “to find the source of the information that’s being put out and if the source is worthy or not.”
The spread of misinformation on social media platforms has become a problem for some users. With so many different accounts on these apps it can get tricky attempting to figure out if what you are reading is fact or fiction.
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