The Golden Trident

By Morgan Cranford

Access to information has become increasingly easy as technology advances and more and more people carry around a smartphone in their pocket. Anywhere, at any time, anybody can Google search whatever they may need or want to know. But use of a search engine requires an active desire to seek information. The amount of information that can be gleaned from a five minute scroll on social media is impressive, albeit maybe not always the most accurate. But how much does accuracy matter really, to the ones turning to Instagram or TikTok for all their knowledge of current events?

Kids and teens of today are so opinionated, however, there often isn’t much substance to the things they are claiming. So much of the time, kids are merely parroting what they’ve heard their whole lives from their parents, or worse, quoting their most recently watched TikTok. Less and less often these days kids seem to be thinking for themselves. 

The infinitely more available information should be a positive thing and it is, to an extent. Yet, because people think that they’re so informed, there is a lot of gray area that isn’t accounted for. Part of the problem is the source of information. While it is easy to hop onto Google to look up something that you don’t have an answer for, this takes effort to actively seek out the knowledge. Social media, however, provides information even if one isn’t seeking it. On the surface, it seems that the prevalence of social media could create a more well informed population, but in reality the algorithm only provides users with the things they want to see. When you interact with a post (by liking, commenting, or replaying it), the app is designed to show you similar posts on your feed in the future. As a result, social media users find themselves in an echo chamber of their own beliefs, not allowing themselves to hear alternative perspectives and therefore not having their beliefs ever challenged. 

Similarly, even without the influence of social media, young people are so inclined to parrot the beliefs that they’ve heard forever from figures of authority in their lives. It is hard to escape the influence of parental guidance, especially when parents have very strong opinions; however, it is so important to encourage young people to be able to think for themselves. Being informed is good, but being informed by biased or outright incorrect news is not. 

In the current political and social landscape, everybody has an opinion about everything. Even if they’ve done none of their own research, kids and teens feel the need to discuss controversial topics motivated by nothing but what they’ve heard around them, with no perspective on if it is true or not. There is a lot of experience that young people lack, that makes it difficult for them to understand the importance of doing your own research and truly understanding a topic before claiming a position on it. To be clear, kids wanting to engage in civil discourse about issues that are relevant to our world isn’t something that should be discouraged. But it becomes more problematic when they are unable to speak from their own positions and are instead just parroting the things that they hear (or alternatively, saying the exact opposite of what they are hearing, just to be a contrarian). 

Having positions on complicated issues is a step in the right direction in terms of having kids and teens that are ready and informed enough to be productive members of society. But ultimately, we need to encourage discourse that is based in fact and personal research. If people want to argue relevant issues, they have a responsibility to treat them with respect, which means understanding the topic you are discussing to its fullest extent. It’s hard when you’re young because of all the external influences and pressures to believe and behave a certain way, but appreciating the nuance of an argument and building your own position is so important, especially as our world continues to evolve.