It’s often said that the digital age has made us impulsive, and while I don’t want to combat the validity of that, I think it’s pretty evident that humans have always been at least somewhat impulsive, technology just preys on that instinct.
When we see or hear new information, we take it in immediately, it takes some time for us to process it and decide whether that information is worth storing, but on the internet, you’re being exposed to thousands of pieces of information every minute, meaning you only have so much time to digest each piece and sift through it for validity.
Consider for a moment, a hypothetical. Your best friend texts you and says “I have some really big news, can we meet up?” What is your first thought? Probably something along the lines of “oh gosh, what could it be?” right? You might be nervous or excited or maybe just curious, but you have to wait. Now imagine you finally meet up and the conversation starts with your best friend asking you how you’ve been and how your day was. How do you feel about that? Would you ask them to cut it out and just jump to the big news, or would you wait?
The internet is basically full of links, images, and videos that all contain “big news.” Most headlines and articles are designed to be highly clickable. They use titles that pique interest, images/thumbnails that make you want to learn more. And that instinct to learn the big news right away takes over and you open the article or watch the video without thinking, only to find yourself on a scary looking website that screams “virus” and is littered with dozens of ads and you see that the “big news” is just something actually quite tame and boring.
A lot of these sites use these tactics to encourage you to mindlessly click in order to harvest your data, spread misinformation, or even to infect your computer with a virus. This premise is how phishing scams work and is the basis for a lot of global misinformation that is spread via social media. So. How do we combat it?
Click Restraint
A “fact checker” is an actual job people have, they sort through information and make sure to highlight and discredit misinformation. When doing research fact checkers practice “click restraint.” Click restraint is a practice in which you take in as much information as possible prior to actually clicking on an article, and it really varies from situation to situation. When googling something, a large portion of Americans simply click on the first or second link that pops up, but that doesn’t always mean they’re clicking on the best link.
When practicing click restraint, it’s better to scan these pages first. Are they ads instead of proper search results? Are the sites reputable/recognizable? Do the inline descriptions match what you’re trying to find out? If there are any red flags, that’s a sign you probably shouldn’t click onto that article. By pausing and taking 5 seconds to think about these little things you’re going to help yourself immensely. But that doesn’t mean you’re infallible.
Evaluating Sources
Before you share content with someone, angrily post it to social media, or let an article or a video sway you into believing something, you should take a second and make sure the source is trustworthy. There are three great ways to evaluate a source to make sure it’s legitimate. The first is to fully read the article. While reading, be sure you’re looking for telltale signs of misinformation, do they cite their sources? Are the sources reliable? Does this information actually make sense? And most importantly, does this information confirm a preexisting bias and thus makes me more likely to believe it? I get that those questions are tough to constantly keep in mind, but the more you regularly think about these things, the more you’ll instinctually do it.
The second way to verify the legitimacy of an article is to look at who made it and why they might have written it. Most news sites have an “about us” page where you can learn more about the company who produced the article, and some even have sections where you can learn directly about the writer too. If you click learn more and find out a site or writer are funded by a political party and that article seems like the perfect argument by that political party, well, you might need to take it with a grain of salt. The same is true for the resources these websites cite as sources. I’ve read countless articles that overhype a product, only to find that their sources were funded by the company who made that product.
The third way to evaluate an article is to do “upstream investigation” and “lateral reading.” Upstream investigation is when you look at the sources a content cites and see if those sources are legitimate. You’ll find that a lot of sources for less credible articles aren’t actually directly connected to the claim that the article is making. Lateral reading is when you do your own research on the same topic and read different articles from different viewpoints. Just be sure to practice click restraint when finding additional articles.
Putting it Into Practice
Yahoo News released an article in 2019 that stated “Millennials are Killing Cereal,” which is a sensationalist headline if I’ve ever heard one. Here’s the link.
So, let’s practice all of our ways to evaluate evidence. First, we read through the entire article, notice that right away the author makes derogatory statements about millennials, calling them “non-homeowning social media addicts” who kill “various industries.” So right away, we know this author has a bit of a chip on their shoulder. The article goes on to cite two sources and generally makes a claim that millennials are not interested in cereal and makes some guesses to explain why. Within the article there are two sources, a report on cereal sales being in decline and a different report by CNN on the same idea that millennials abandoned cereal.
Let’s go through our questions. Do they cite their sources? Yes, but the two citations are at the front end of the article. They also don’t have any sources when they start to go over what might “be the cause” of millennials eating less cereal, which is suspicious. CNN is definitely a trustworthy source, but the other source is MyRecipes, which doesn’t look that trustworthy. The site is owned by the Meredith Corporation, which is a massive media conglomerate, so we can’t really trust or distrust this article too much just on initial inspection. Does the information make sense? The article does, but the headline? Not so much, but we’ll come back to that in a bit. And does this article confirm some pre-existing biases I have? Kind of! We’re always being told that millennials are killing off different industries, so I am inclined to believe it, which means I need to be extra skeptical.
As for Yahoo News, I mean, it’s Yahoo News. It’s neither here nor there in terms of reputation. There’s no link on Tim Nelson on Yahoo’s site, but a quick google search finds that he’s a freelance writer who recently has been focusing on the supply-chain, which is definitely a hot-button topic, and that could mean anything really.
And finally, let’s do some upstream investigation. Luckily, we can sus out this source pretty quick. One skim through of the CNN article finds us with a pretty important sentence, “the stronger preference for cereal among older adults and children has been going on for ‘decades.’” So, are millennials killing the cereal industry? No, it seems more like… millennials aren’t kids anymore and therefore don’t eat cereal. The article also explains that we’re currently at a record low for the number of children in the US. Which also is evidence for a decline in cereal enjoyers. The MyRecipe article suggests the same thing. So, are millennials responsible for killing cereal? No. They’re only guilty of getting older.
And that’s that! All in all, quickly going through this information took me about three minutes and saved me the heartache from being upset. This mindset is easily applied to just about anything you find on the internet, from videos to images. And if I can just be direct for a second, it has made my life so much better. I’m not one to get needlessly upset about stuff I find online, but sometimes things get under my skin! But by taking a second and really analyzing what I’ve read, I realize that I truly had nothing to worry about.
Want to learn more about digital literacy? Check out this article we wrote on phishing links.
You can also sign up for a digital literacy class for free at SDCCU, learn more by clicking here.
Want my sources? I’m a former teacher and librarian who gave lectures on doing quality research and navigating digital media! I also got a good amount of my information from these two amazing sources:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVlzxEslXCi4DoBaurZoIOLJxsLHRWfKb