We are smarter, but more naive

We, as a people are smarter than we have ever been. With knowledge, being the Internet, literally at our fingertips, how could we not be? You can get the answer to any question you can think of, but that does not always mean it is correct.

In school, I had to write countless research papers, and I absolutely hated it. It was not the actual writing part that bothered me (even if it was 10 pages). It was researching.

As I got older, the research aspect of research papers was focused more on the Internet and less on actually going to the library and reading books. Shocking, I know. You may think this meant it would be easier to find information on your topic, but it was much more difficult. Why? Because there is so much information.

I spent hours searching through websites trying to find reliable information. In school, I had to learn how to tell if a website was trustworthy or not. I mean, anyone can create a website and put whatever they want on it. Even though the Internet has useful information, it is full of unreliable, meaningless, and even completely made-up information, and that is my point.

My generation is very smart, and I do not think they realize it. We know so much information, and we are more in-tune with what is happening in the world. Thank you, social media. However, we are tricked so easily. It seems as if someone puts something online and everyone says, “Yup. Okay, that’s true. I believe it.” When in reality, you must question everything that you see online.

Any time I see something online, I check the website or person it is from to see if it’s a reliable source. Just today, I saw a tweet claiming to be from Obama. Immediately, I did a search on Twitter looking for the tweet (Yes, you can do that.), and guess what? It didn’t exist. There’s this thing called Photoshop that people use to create fake tweets. Just so you know for future reference.

Question everything. Be it online, on TV, in magazines, wherever. We are smart. We are intellectual. We are knowledgeable. Do not let this generation be known as being the naive ones who believed everything that was told to them.