Every time I scroll on social media, there is at least one post that leaves me with the same dull questions: What happened to thinking? When exactly did thinking about the media we consume fall out of fashion? When did we start disregarding everything we learned as kids about internet safety and begin blindly trusting everything we see?
The answer lies, as most things do, within the cultural shift of COVID-19. When the pandemic sequestered us inside our homes, we found comfort in the huge ecosystem of the World Wide Web. Young people, who bore the brunt of the technological revolution, quickly found themselves at the forefront of a new world.
What began as a lifeline quickly turned into a labyrinth. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and X weren’t just entertainment during the pandemic — they became classrooms, newsrooms and even community centers. But unlike schools or libraries, these spaces had few guardrails for misinformation. As the algorithms grew smarter, we grew lazier. The responsibility to think about what we consumed slipped away faster than we could have imagined. Media literacy didn’t just fall out of fashion, it became collateral damage in the digital arms race.
Just because we, as young people, grew up with the internet doesn’t necessarily mean we’re skilled at navigating it. In July, a video of bunnies jumping on a backyard trampoline went viral across multiple platforms. The video showed little to no surface signs of being fake, and most people believed it — until they learned that it was AI-generated.
If a simple video of bunnies can trick thousands of people, what else can? While this example was mostly harmless, others are far more dangerous. Deepfake technology has already been used in many countries as a form of propaganda. In fact, deepfakes were used in numerous instances to attempt to derail the 2024 Presidential Election, such as AI audio of former President Joe Biden asking voters to withhold their votes from the New Hampshire primary.
Despite the online world filling rapidly with misinformation, schools have failed to keep up. While students are expected to memorize math formulas, cite essay sources and solve chemistry problems, lessons on evaluating the credibility of online content are sporadic at best and nonexistent at worst. As of May 2024, 20 states, not including Alabama, have taken legislative steps encouraging education on media literacy, however there is still a gap in access across state lines and even within school districts.. This gap isn’t just inconvenient for students — it’s dangerous. Young people are left to navigate the changing internet on their own with little more than their intuition and the guidance of algorithms designed to entertain, not educate.
When these platforms thrive on interaction, they reward viral content over truth. Outrage, humor or shock content spreads faster than careful reporting, meaning that sensationalized misinformation can reach millions before any fact-checking even starts. Even well-meaning young people can fall into these traps and unknowingly reinforce false narratives by simply liking, sharing or commenting on these posts. These habits dull our instinct to question, to pause or to analyze, turning a generation of potential critical thinkers into passive consumers of whatever trend is most popular.
If we want our society to thrive in the digital age, this cannot continue without a solution. Media literacy must become more than an optional side subject in school curriculums — it must be taught with the same weight as math or science. Students need practical tools to identify bias, check sources and interrogate the media they encounter daily. Without this guidance, algorithms will continue to dictate not just what we see online, but how we think. In a changing world filled with misinformation, that’s a risk we can’t afford.
