Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?

I grew up in a world before the Internet.  There were no social media, no online games, and no email.  Most importantly, in the rural location where I lived, there were few sources of information: TV and radio news, one daily newspaper from Edmonton, one weekly newspaper from Toronto and Time Magazine in the mail monthly.  The local town and school libraries were a joke and so my reference information was a set of encyclopedias.  It was a different world.  While you and your neighbor might disagree on the interpretation of events, for the most part you were in agreement with what events took place and which events were most important.

Fast forward to the1990's and the explosive growth of the Internet.  Suddenly people had free online access to major newspapers around the world.  Chat groups and online discussion forums meant that you could have discussions with people anywhere, anytime.  Wikipedia came online in 2001 and in 6 years became the largest encyclopedia in history, replacing the Yongle Encyclopedia, which had held the record for 600 years.  Social media is so pervasive is our society, it's easy to forget that it has only been mainstream for about 15 years since MySpace took off.

We're now connected in ways that in my youth would have been considered science fiction.  Although much of the most valuable information has become secured behind firewalls, there are still vast troves of information freely available.  We should be the most knowledgeable people in history.

It's Not All Good
In the 1990's, when the Internet was first coming into its own, I found myself drawn to conspiracy theories and other topics where mainstream knowledge was questioned. It started as harmless fun with topics like Roswell, the existence of UFOs and whether the moon landing was faked.  This morphed into more serious issues like the JFK assassination and the Gulf of Tonkin incident that triggered the Vietnam War.  As it went on, people I knew were starting to be immersed  topics like Internet health cures and whether vaccines cause autism.

Spending time reading about topics in which you have no expertise starts out as interesting but soon becomes bewildering.  How do you fact check something when everyone comes with their own set of facts? Over time, the concept of truth becomes hazier and more malleable; and the research begins to feel like a project that will never lead to a conclusion.

For me, the turning point came after 9-11.  So many improbable events happened on one day, it was hard to absorb.  Predictably, it took almost no time for groups to start accusing the US government of a "false flag" operation.  Although many of the conspiracy theories arising from 911 lack any real evidence, there are many credible people who simply question weaknesses in the official explanation.  Over 3,000 architects, engineers and scientists have signed on to Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.  They are questioning the official NIST version of how the 3 buildings fell and demanding a new, independent investigation.  One article I found particularly chilling was this 2009 article in the Open Chemical Physics Journal documenting the analysis of dust collected from points around New York City after 911.  It claims that particles in the dust are consistent with an explosive form of thermite, a material which could be used to bring down buildings.

Hours spent researching 911 left me feeling bewildered and lost. It was impossible to ignore the holes in the official story yet it's awful to contemplate the the potential implications of the official story being wrong or worse, lies.  I gave up and moved on to other things.

The Problems Continue
The Internet continues to be a place of questionable information, fake news, "alternative facts", well-written disinformation and just plain lies.  Two recent examples are the climate change debate and the 2016 US election and subsequent Trump presidency. 

In the case of climate change, it's hard to imagine another branch of scientific research that is subject to so much controversy, resistance and disinformation.  The reasons are fairly clear - people don't like change, especially when it costs them money; and there are huge industries that stand to lose trillions of dollars in revenue by switching away from fossil fuels.  The Internet provides support and ammunition to those who don't want to change.  Meanwhile, scientists have been issuing increasingly urgent pleas for citizens and politicians to take action.  It's only recently, since the effects of climate change are becoming more apparent, that people are starting to take it seriously.

In terms of the election, the Internet was a cesspool of false information and entirely made up news. These articles were widely shared on social media. There is incontrovertible evidence that points to Russian involvement in swinging the election towards Trump. A study conducted in 2018 concluded that fake news may well have cost Clinton the presidency.

So Now What?
The Internet is the greatest revolution in human communication since the invention of written language.  However, like all technology, its power can be misused as easily as it is used.  It can be used to spread information and build knowledge or it can be used to spread disinformation and shut down debate.


Some practical suggestions for dealing with the dangers of false information include:

• Social media giants need to take more accountability for false information that is spread on their sites.  This is starting to happen.
• We need entities that can call out fake news without being attacked by the left or the right.  This need has been variously filled by websites like snopes.com, some journalists and certain academics.  However, so far, none of this has proven capable of effectively calling out or correcting misinformation.
• People need to develop better critical reasoning skills.  In particular, there is a phenomenon called the Kruger-Dunning effect which describes peoples' tendencies to overestimate their knowledge and abilities when it comes to forming conclusions on technical topics.