The internet has extremely advanced access to widespread information, giving us the world in our hands. YET, with all the availability we have, to any question that crosses our mind, our generation tends to flock to Twitter as a news source.
While Twitter is great and all, per its convenience, and the duality between the news to dank meme ratio, it should not be the only app you turn to for news. Here’s why:
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Your newsfeed is 100% catered to YOU
Whether we want to admit it or not, all of our social media platforms are centered around our likes. Social media applications and websites commonly used on your phones,often collect “cookies” that save your searches, similar to Google or Safari. So, every ad and every follow suggestion are literally monitored to get you to tap it!
With that being said, your Twitter feed will never be super objective. Meaning, you will rarely get both sides of any story. This is an extreme setback because only understanding one perspective, that is catered toward you, means you will never question the factuality.
2. It’s Not Always Real
Fake News. It’s a thing. It is critical to fact check everything you see on the internet, but even more so on Twitter. 9/10 times, if it is not coming from a verified news outlet, it may not even be partially true. If you’re trying to get well versed on anything relevant, be sure to conduct your own research. You can’t just trust a solid Twitter thread with 100K+ retweets.
3. There’s No Interest In Self-Discovery
This almost coincides with point two, as there is seemingly little to no drive to learn on our own anymore. It’s a social norm to just refer to a raging tweet or the title of an article with a lot of retweets, but not reading it! If there is any topic that catches your interest, explore it. Refer to Tweets, articles or all of the above! Do not let Twitter form your opinions, or the basis of it, without trying to find one for yourself.
4. Twitter Fingers Rule Over Proactive Action
While retweets are great to get traaction for major topics, it should not be the only action taken for a lot of serious topics. Often times, there is too much satisfaction in retweeting for a cause instead of taking an offline action for it. Such as protesting, donating, lobbying, etc! We just can’t get too comfortable behind our screens.
5. Depending On Twitter Can Lead To Being “Fake” Woke and Problematic
There is really nothing worse than being loud and wrong. In the real world, and on social media, it is crucial to know what you’re saying before you say it. If not, you better be open to the influx of opinions that will come attacking you for not understanding a different fact or a counteracting opinion. A huge step to prevent this is KNOWING WHAT YOU KNOW, take all of the stated points above and taking action.