Kaleigh Rukavina
Student at Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences
I have noticed that despite it being easier than ever to open Google on your phone and to type in a search query, people are becoming less and less prone to doing their own research. I have seen many people take the advice they hear from a simple video or post and just instantly believe it to be fact, without doing any of their own investigation. As someone who loves to learn and will spend hours going down rabbit holes on random topics, it saddens me to see that the resources we have available via the internet aren’t being used as much as they could be.
I do wonder why this is — is it that we have become ignorant to the privilege that we have at our fingertips? Or maybe we simply don’t care if something is true anymore, especially with the increase of AI information being used. I think it’s always worth looking up important topics for yourself and using trustworthy sources. Another factor may be that many “influencers” make money by telling you what to buy, what to think, what to wear etc. So they will make themselves out to be the trustworthy ones and people have too much external stress to spend time disagreeing with them, and just buy what they’re suggested.
Part of it may stem from our education system itself, as learning and education are done almost out of necessity, with a very assembly line-like system that does not promote the joy of learning and researching topics you might care about. Definitely something that is worth digging into and observing as generations grow older and technology advances with us.