NASA Discovers a Meteor Heading for Earth

If you are reading these words right now, it means that you have successfully avoided being one of the 59% of the people that, according to a recent study by Columbia University and the French National Institute, only read news headlines without trying to get any full context whatsoever. Although right now, the question isn’t about how many people do this, it’s about how much this action is affecting our daily lives.

According to the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 5800 people were admitted into hospitals and several others found dead on the 12th of August 2020 due to false information of social media about injecting yourself with bleach. 17 out of the total 25 websites checked even stated that the WHO doesn’t recommend that action, but only in the article’s body. 3944 people could have been spared the pain of methanol poisoning or even death if they had just spared a minute of their time to read the article. That is but one example of how much harm news misinformation and titles taken out of context can cause. But why do we, as humans, do that? Why do we have such an urge to skip articles and facts just to spare a minute or two.

Simply put, in this generation, there is too much to see. When there is too much to see, that means that there is also a lot of uninteresting topics, videos, and particularly articles that we would rather not waste our precious time seeing. And so, we have adapted to value speed over content. The faster you go, the faster you can reach the things you actually care to see.

Personally, I feel that it is hard to find a solution to such a problem. A good way to start is to train yourself to have an urge to learn the truth in a longer time, rather than learn lies and misinformation faster. Because genuinely caring about whether we are being told the truth or lied to, is our only hope of solving this deadly dilemma.