Facebook : Dumbing Us Down One Share at a Time

By Kenda - February, 26th 2013

It’s no secret that I spend a lot of time on Facebook. Not only for work, but for social interaction with friends as well. There’s always something fun, interesting etc to find. The internet as a whole can be a marvelous place full of information and entertainment. Unfortunately Facebook is “dumbing us down” one share at a time.

Today alone I’ve seen three different ‘informative’ posts shared – two infographics and the other a list of word origins – that were so incorrect and/or misleading it made my brain hurt. And they weren’t even political. Things like ‘saved by the bell’ is about dead people rising from their graves. No…it’s a 19th century boxing term. Or how about ‘brides carry bouquets because people use to stink because they only took one bath a year.’ ….yeah… not even close. It took me about 4 minutes to find citation for 90% of the list and to get confirmation that it was a bunch of hogwash (one was even taken from Yahoo Answers). But, that doesn’t stop hundreds of people from sharing it and spreading the misconceptions.

Another post was shown to me by a friend because she’s a fact checker like I am and wanted my input. It was a graph of so-called monetary records of charity organizations. Again, so vastly misleading that you could tell whomever put it together forgot there is a difference between 501(c)3, private organizations, and social clubs – and definitely didn’t understand how they operate. They probably saw it on another share, retyped it and shared it again – sans fact checking.

Is this where our modern education is coming from?

Now, believe it or not, my objection to this kind of thing has nothing to do with the message behind it. I don’t care what charity you donate to, what political party you support or if you believe the moon is made of cheese. What does bother me is how many people follow along without researching for themselves. We’re becoming a society that is willingly spoon fed our own thoughts. We stand on soap boxes we didn’t build and then wonder why we can’t hold our own when confronted by an opposing view. People see a pretty picture with words and numbers on it and instantly share it to all their friends because fancy font and bar graphs = truth. Those friends share it again and so on. Next thing you know 15,000 people think ‘dead ringer’ has to do with zombies instead of racing horses and the common denominator of online arguments becomes “I’ve always heard…”.

Let me clarify – I don’t think sharing incorrect facts makes a person less intelligent by default. But, I can’t help but wonder – why are they doing it? When you share something on Facebook that means you are currently accessing the internet –  the largest source of information available to man. Why is there no fact checking? It’s like spelling a word wrong while you’re holding a dictionary. Maybe it’s a modern version of gossip and people don’t care about the actual topic – just whether they get a good conversation out of it. I just can’t fly with that. I’m a research fan; I enjoy looking things up and finding out additional information. But, I realize not everyone likes that. Snopes is a great way to search something fast – especially if you saw it on Facebook, Twitter etc. You save yourself having to field ‘that is bs’ comments all day and keep your friends from dealing with the same fate. Unfortunately, some people would rather spend days explaining themselves or passing the buck than just 5 minutes avoiding comment chaos. One person, when confronted about how inaccurate their share was, said, “I didn’t make the post, I just shared it.”  When you post something on your personal space, it becomes your personal statement – especially if it’s under the umbrella of a political, lifestyle or other agenda (unless you say something like ‘what do you guys think about this?’ etc for the sake of debate). For people who disagree with me I’d pose this example: “I didn’t write this picket sign. I’m just carrying it”.

Normally this drives me so batty that I can’t resist correcting the claims. It’s my own weakness (rather, my personal OCD) and the reason my husband constantly says, “Why do you go on Facebook? It just ticks you off.” But going around Facebook leaving citations? Ain’t nobody got time for that…anymore. So I’ll leave this post here and try my best to move on (even if it makes my teeth itch).

When wandering the halls of social networks I beseech you to keep in mind: Not all sources are created equal and a pretty picture does not a fact make. The internet can be a tool of enlightenment, education and revelation. Give it a try – you’ll be amazed at what you learn.