Real or Fake?

Growing up, I used to hear adults talk about the "real world." Even these days, some of my fellow oldsters will express concern as to whether current youth are ready for the "real world." (My own sense has been they are as ready for it as we were when we were their age.) A recent study by folks at Stanford University, however, suggests that perhaps those generations on the verge of adulthood may, in fact, not be as ready as any of us think. The study was conducted to see how well folks are able to distinguish between information that is real versus not-real or false. It turns out they had a great deal of trouble distinguishing between the two.

For starters, let us all agree that this is not a good thing. The study revolved around information that is put forward via various social media mechanisms. As we know, much of the information disseminated to the general public these days is via social media. Facebook and twitter continue to be among the more popular forms. The downside here is that as any one is free and able to post most anything they want on social media, there are very few controls  to ensure what they are saying is true and/or accurate. Just because one says they own a pet unicorn, of course, does not make it actually so. Folks can even package what they are saying in such a way as to make their claims appear to be credible.

Another concern is how representative of society are the results of this study? While the study had younger people as the audience, how representative are those who participated of the rest of us? My hunch is their inability to distinguish between real and fake information is a problem for our larger population as well. We certainly saw this in the just-finished U.S. presidential campaign. This feeds into the current status of "facts." As I have observed in earlier blog entries, "facts" do not seem to be held in as high regard as they used to. (Global warning any one?) We seem to becoming a world where those who shout the loudest win as opposed to those having facts on their side.