Social media has taken over today’s tech world. It
is everywhere in the world, and almost every person either knows what social
media is and they utilize it, or they just know it exists. It is so prevalent
in our society that most people are now using it to get their daily news
updates almost instantly. However, the age groups for these sites vary vastly
and there is one site in particular that Americans seem to be drawn to for
their news sources.
Facebook
has proven to be the number one site for American users to get their news
information. “Three in ten adults get at least some news while on Facebook”
(Matsa). This means that Facebook has about half of its users getting their
news from their site. This is quite a lot of people, especially since Facebook was
not created to be an online CNN. However, not all of the news we see on
Facebook can be proven true. A lot of the articles we read on the site are
hoaxes and are written for entertainment and a big “like” response from its
audience. This can cause a problem because then people share a story they
believe to be true and it spreads like wildfire across the internet, whether
it’s true or not.
The
age groups for social media today vary vastly. For Facebook, their main news
reading audience is between the ages of 30-49 and is more than likely
male. For twitter, the male to female
ration is pretty even, but the age for news viewing is between 18-29. (Matsa)
However, when you look at the users of these two sites in comparison with the
amount of education they have received, you will notice that most of the news
viewers on these sites have a high school education or less. The reason behind this
data could be the fact that college students or graduates have been taught not
to take the stories for face value and to do further research on them before
trusting the source. This could possibly mean that having some college education,
not necessarily a degree, could make you less vulnerable to being a victim of
false news information on social media sites.
In conclusion,
yes, social media is a way to get quick, right as it happens, news information.
However, you should never trust a story you find n Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
etc. until you have followed through on its validity. Social media is a good
way to keep in touch with the world as a whole quite easily, but this also
makes the world population vulnerable to whatever people want to publish,
whether it’s true or not. So next time you go to share a story, make sure you
check the source(s).
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