VENKAT: Breaking news: Your opinion is now considered fact
Pitches like these have become all too common: "I made six figures at age sixteen in a mere five days! Here at (generic YouTube channel), I have taken it upon myself to teach you — yes, you — how to become rich in just one month. That's right, one month! Come back next time to see what else you do not know yet."
Since its conception, the internet has been viewed largely as the gateway to knowledge. Information previously unavailable to the common person has become plentiful. Should you want to learn how to bake a cake or find out whether your spouse is cheating on you, the internet is there for you.
Along with the internet, a new genre of media has emerged — people preaching their opinions as gospel and advocating very specific, very niche viewpoints. The overconsumption of information, as propagated by the Internet, has shifted how people absorb, understand and interpret information.
The issue is especially concerning as only 45.7 percent of Americans can differentiate between fact and opinion. This statistic is cause for concern simply due to the plethora of opinions intertwined with facts available online.
Americans are spending approximately eight hours per day consuming information via digital media. Information readily available at our fingertips waiting to filter into our brains is all good and well, but only to the extent that we can understand what is factual and what is merely opinion framed as fact.
Moreover, 56 percent of Americans share or repost information online, most of whom do not verify their posts as fact before they hit share. The string of knowledge is broken when the first sharer chooses not to fact-check their information. This same knowledge is then reposted, reshared and consumed in a vicious cycle where sensationalism precedes facts.
It is akin to knowing the food in your fridge has spoiled and not only eating it anyways, but sharing it with your house guests and packing them some to take home. The general public has taken to blind trust in their online information streams, a notion that can only lead to disaster.
Much of the information online is objectively biased, most likely including this article and perhaps even the entirety of this column. Creators have taken to putting their spin on information.
For example, there is an unnecessarily large number of creators online who dish out financial advice as if it grows on trees. One study found that only 31 percent of millennials and Generation Z surveyed the qualifications of social media financial advisors. Needless to say, it is highly unlikely that the finance Guru on your "For You" page has the right advice for your specific financial situation. How is the layman meant to discern the expert from the novice from the fraud?
This kind of content creation creates a path to destroy viewers' critical thinking skills. Shoving information down people's throats with no directive as to what is right and wrong leads to ideologies based on falsehoods. When people are fed opinions rather than facts, they have no choice but to form their own thoughts around those opinions.
At what point does it become difficult to decipher whether an idea is accurate or not, whether it is really your idea or not?
A 2011 Forbes article defines information as "something that informs decisions, and those decisions are made by people." The quality of information has changed drastically since 2011. Now, there is no guarantee that information informs decisions.
This fine line between information and opinion has to change. Other people's opinions are ample, and access to information is so widespread that it places a huge amount of responsibility on the consumer to verify and understand it, potentially leading to confirmation bias taking hold.
Moreover, the use of social media has distorted social justice movements in that it has become increasingly easy to grow a fanbase and contribute to the rise of cancel culture, which has contributed to an exacerbated sense of moral panic that someone or something threatens an individual's values. Social media use has a positive correlation with overzealous responses to issues and increased tension about possible threats.
The polarized nature of the media and the internet directly relates to public hysteria, implying that opinionated information online negatively impacts how people think and behave.
It is simply impossible to verify all the information we come across. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world where only scholarly, peer-reviewed articles are available. With the quality of information downgrading, it is essential to be able to distinguish fact and fiction to regain our power to make our own decisions based on objective information.
Tejaswini Venkat is a first-year in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in biological sciences and minoring in psychology. Venkat's column, “Unsolicited Opinions,” runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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