By: Katie Werner
This past week, a friend of mine said “I just saw that they’re making “My First Vape Kits” for kids 5-12 months-old. Can you believe that?!” I immediately had some doubts, and asked her where she saw it. Her answer? Instagram. Specifically, an Instagram meme page. In this day and age, anything could be possible so I asked her to pull it up on Google and see what some sources had to say. Right off the bat, places like Snopes, Reuters, and other reliable outlets declared the toy to be a fabricated product. My friend was not alone in thinking that the toy was real, thousands of people were fooled by the same exact thing.
This innocent situation made me think about how easily our generation is influenced by social media. We rely so heavily on these platforms, a lot of the time people don’t think twice about something they see online. This is a real issue. One of the most informative classes I took during high school was about media literacy and current events. This class taught me to question and cross check everything I saw online. I learned to even check what we may think of as reliable sources because more often than not, there is a bias present in what we are consuming online. I find this topic to be especially important in light of the recent events surrounding the Israel and Palestine conflict and the upcoming 2024 election.
I hear people saying to not believe everything you read online; however, I often fail to see my peers practice this. News headlines, videos, photos, and nearly anything else can be altered to fit into a certain bias or promote a fabricated narrative. Sure, a lot of social media is harmless or even informative of current events. However, it’s dangerous to rely solely on these platforms for information.
New technology like AI has made it increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. AI, specifically deep-fake, can alter videos in an extremely believable way. Consequently, if you were scrolling through Tik Tok and saw a video of a prominent political leader making a statement, like Hillary Clinton stating “I actually like Ron DeSantis a lot” in a deep-fake political endorsement circulating online, one might be inclined to immediately believe it.
Failing to cross-check information that influences your perspectives on important events is harmful in many ways. First of all, it could lead to amplifying the spread of misinformation. If you see something online, it is very easy to share it with the click of a button. Secondly, it can lead to concrete changes that you most likely did not intend to make. Let’s say you liked Hillary Clinton and saw the video of her endorsing Ron DeSantis. You may even change your perspective of DeSantis, someone who holds a very different perspective than Clinton, and cast a vote for him in the upcoming election. With the viewing of one video, and the failure to fact check, you could contribute to electing a president that doesn’t align with your morals at all and potentially cause harm to yourself and others.
It is becoming more and more important to make sure the information you are getting from social media is correct. False information can be extremely detrimental, especially when dealing with issues larger than the reliability of fake vape toys. There are a few ways you can easily check for misinformation; check to see if the source is reliable, cross check the given information with sources you know you can trust like Reuters, .org’s, .edu’s, and research oriented platforms. It can be difficult to separate fact from fiction, but in order to make properly informed decisions, you need to go the extra mile.