As the world careens from one crisis to another—as COVID-19 brings us closed schools and massive unemployment, as horrific videos of police brutality spark more than a week of nationwide protests—one thing has been constant and concerning: We are devouring digital media, seeking out information and scrolling for solace.
And, let’s face it, we’re seeking and scrolling in the dark. We’re doing this literally, as we sit up at 2 a.m. in our bedrooms, scrolling and clicking and unable to sleep. And figuratively, clicking through mazes of media messages on social media, pushing through brush to find a trail. Most of us have had no guides to orient us in this streaming and screaming digital world.
How were we supposed to know that a widely distributed photo of the Washington Monument on fire during the protests was a total fake? Where do we turn when someone makes the false claim that masks are bad for our health? We never got training on which plants are poison. Meanwhile, when we can pull ourselves away from our own on-screen odysseys, we are supposed to be helping teach our stuck-at-home kids, steering them away from toxic memes and violent media and toward the good stuff, when we have had little to no guidance on what the good stuff even looks like.
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Source: The antidote to disinformation and screen time confusion.