Be smart about news
The issues surrounding fake news stories: While it is easy for members of a younger generation to ascribe them to older, somewhat technologically impaired people, they are just as much a concern for all age groups. The guise of legitimacy that social media can give to falsified images or biased, non-factual articles proves extremely enticing to young people, according to a recent study from Stanford.
It painted students in middle school, high school and college in a grim light as far as their ability to identify fake news goes. The prevalence of fake news, which has proven itself to have strong, sometimes tragic implications for society in recent months, is nothing new. The general public never used to even bat an eyelash when Weekly World News ran an exclusive story on a Bat Child fighting the Taliban, and the hard-hitting muckraking of the Onion has for years been taken with nothing more than a grain of salt.
The only things that have really changed are the outlets such stories are shared through. People of all ages need to exhibit a little more common sense and educate themselves on how to identify untrustworthy news, regardless of where it comes from.
Eric Mulligan
Liberty Lake