The Information We Consume

Unfortunately for most of us, including myself, we are living in a social media driven society.

 I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do when I barely even have my eyes open is check my twitter account. From my trending page, I will observe short headlines typically reading such things like, 'Supreme Court-US Supreme Court upholds Trump administration's travel ban,' or 'Mcdonald's wants to win breakfast by selling the muffin's best part,' along with other various celebrity tweets and shocking allegations. After I've spent a few brief moments on that site, I navigate over to Instagram to see less headlines and more travel, announcement, congratulations, or throw back photos. I scroll for a little bit, hit the heart button a few times, watch a few stories, then I swap over to Facebook. Five scrolls down into my Facebook feed and I have already watched three recipe videos, read two articles regarding various topics I had not the slightest idea about, such as 'Reliving sciatic pain with a tennis ball', or 'Protecting my marriage', one engagement announcement, and a few random funny pictures being shared around. 

As much as I hate to admit it, these are my day to day sources of information.

Growing up, my mother always had the morning news going, every weekday morning from five until the time we left for school around seven. When we all finally made it home in the evening, she would then put on the nightly news and let it run until the weekly TV shows made their appearance. This was something my sisters and I grew used to over the years. Whether what was happening was real or not, it was comforting to know what was going on in our state and throughout our country. I had a little Envy 3 cell phone by the time I was entering high school, and at that point, social media wasn't any what near a part of my daily life such as it is today. I relied on my moms background noise of the nightly news along with what the locals were talking about in town.

I had no idea what Kim Kardashian was doing with her life or what shade of lipstick Rihanna was wearing. 

I didn't know which celebrity was doing what until it hit the People magazines throughout Safeway.  

I didn't filter through our presidents tweets or get my news from a trending page on my phone. 

I watched the president on the news or read the front page of the newspaper my mom would leave on the kitchen table.

News travels amazingly fast now. Whether it is real or fake, it spreads like wildfire over the internet. It travels so fast that usually by the same time the next day we are already focused on a new story. 

I didn't realize how much I didn't want to admit that three apps on my phone were my daily source for news and entertainment until now. When it comes down to it, I simply just do not incorporate news sources into my life anymore. I never signed up for a cable provider after I moved away from home because I didn't see the point in wasting money subscribing to commercials and I moved around too much to stick to a newspaper supplier. Between work and school, just checking my phone in the morning and on lunch was the easiest  and quickest way for me to see anything going on locally or nationally. 

As far as reliability goes, I honestly don't believe 70% of the things I read anymore. There's no proof anywhere. Just like Stephanie Bushari referenced in her Ted Talk, we are all publishers. Anything we put out there on the web, is for the world to see. Anybody can say they saw something, who am I to tell them they are wrong? Whether or not they told it correctly or saw it all, we don't know. We were not there. Opinions and facts can sometimes cling a little close together and next thing we know, half of the story is based solely on opinions that we may now believe is fact. 

I know I don't speak for everybody, but I think it's truly scary we don't know what to believe anymore. There's so much out there being covered up or we aren't given the entire truth on. It's almost stressful we live in a fast pace, technology based society now. It's terrifying how fast we browse past one horrific story to the next without even a second thought. One story we may read on Yahoo may be totally different on CNN. 

The power to share and tag people in real time articles really gets the ball rolling on news head liners. Again referencing the first Ted Talk, most of us are guilty of sharing articles on the big social media outlets without a second thought. We don't know if it's real or fake yet, we just want all of our followers to be just as aware as we are! Even if it's not sharing or tagging, it may even be tweeting our opinion on an unfolding story which may translate as sharing the story to some. Personally, I don't share news stories on any of my social media platforms and I try my best not to tweet or retweet any opinions anywhere. I observe and I move on. Simply because I don't even believe half of the things I see.