Why Relying On Social Media News Sources Doesn't Make You As "Conscious" As You Might

So you’ve seen an informative (or what you think is informative) article pop up on your news feed again, right?

We've all seen it - articles upon articles about relevant and controversial topics that we all just love to devour and spit out for others to voice their opinions on. But what happens when you have to decide to draw the thin line between what's a credible source and what's well, not? And how do we even decide what we should be believing versus what we should be avoiding?

62% of U.S adults rely on social media as a credible news source. This means that more than half of your friends and foes get their information from social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. That’s a crazy percentage when you think about the amount of people on your news feed passionately stating their views and opinions about shared “news” articles.

With all of the disheartening news about the current election, to even controversial issues such as racism seemingly happening even more now than ever, what exactly can we deem credible? With the speed that our fingers can retweet something we see versus the time that it actually takes us to read and decipher an article, we're putting more thought into the caption than into the actual reading itself, to even figure out what's true and what may be propaganda.

It's the turn of the century and realistically the younger generation is arguably the most conscious and socially aware generation yet - thanks to social media. With news being able to arrive in the palm of our hands within seconds of action, it's true that not always are we as "woke" as we’d like to actually think.

I came across an article on Twitter from Washington Post with the title, "Neo-Nazis have declared New Balance the ‘Official Shoes of White People.’” And while this initially made me want to rummage through my closet and burn anything New Balance, my fingers retweeted the article quicker than I could allow myself to read through the article fully.

Had I not read the article to its entirety, I would have only thought that the Ceo of new balance whole heartedly supported the Neo-Natzi organization. While further more reading, the article explained that while the 110 year old company does support the the trade policy that Trump is trying to impose, they do not support nor condone the remarks made by the Neo-Nazi blogger. Reading all the way through the article made me think twice before I were to impulsively retweet something else that further upset me ever again.

This gave me the thought that I was, in fact, just as guilty of creating incredible disillusions in my head as any person writing a misinforming caption. So how can you make sure (to the best of your ability) that the information that you are retaining is actually factual? Well for starters, here’s a list of misleading clickbait-y “news” sources, as well as a few tips that have helped me:

Read through the article

Read through the article in its entirety before you decide to formulate a biased opinion. Sometimes, when you get to the end of the article, your initial opinion may have changed.

Check more than one source

Read through a few different articles from a few different sites to validate your point. Reading it from more than one source will help you justify what the initial article is actually trying to tell you. Again, here is a list of misleading sources that you should steer clear of.

Voice your opinion

Everyone is allowed to their own opinion, it’s called freedom of speech. Voicing your opinion may even actually give an opposer some qualified information that may end up changing their views too.

Keep your consciousness. But monitor where you're actually getting your resources from. It will give your words, arguments and opinions that much more power when the opposing side tries to voice their retort and it will give you the voice that you as an individual are entitled to.

What are some ways that you like to validate your sources? We’d all love to hear, enlighten us and leave a comment!