How information sharing has changed

- The internet wasn't widely available outside of schools and libraries when I was a child in the early to mid 1990s. If something big happened, you heard about it on the TV or radio, then the morning or evening edition of the paper would have a little bit more coverage on it. Information sharing has changed so much since then, specifically in three main ways: format, authorship and speed. People's media diets were fairly consistent up until the early 2000s. If you wanted to know something, you had to turn to a book, magazine, newspaper, radio or television. Technology and the internet shook up that traditional media diet and unleashed a world where you can find any information you want or need in the format of your choosing, such as online tutorials, short messages on social media, chat bots, and so much more. The only limit on the format is a person's imagination. When you think of authorship, people didn't have to worry too much about the accuracy of information when their media diets were constrained to established formats like newspaper, radio, and television. A person knew that behind each broadcast or article was an army of editors, producers, journalists and writers vetting information by going to credible sources, fact-checking the information and doing on-the-ground reporting. The explosion in access to the internet and technology put everyone in the driver's seat. Anyone could have a blog, online video channel, website, social media account, or online publication. Whether or not the information was true or fair, the author could put it online for the world to see. That growth has been incredible. The Pew Research Center found that 5% of Americans used at least one social media platform in 2005. By 2019, the proportion had increased to 72%. That's a lot of people putting potentially unchecked information online. Lastly, the speed that information travels has accelerated a lot. Instead of relying on news organizations to get reporters on the ground at important events or relying on complicated processes to beam live images to your television, people can now take a picture and share it with the world in mere seconds. This means misinformation can spread quickly around the globe. A 2018 MIT study found it took real stories six times longer than false stories to reach people on a social media platform. In fact, fake stories were 70% more likely than real stories to be re-shared on the platform. Clearly, the way we share and consume information has changed a lot over just a few decades. We need to be aware of those changes and adapt to them in order to make sure we're consuming only the best and most accurate information. These are not simple lessons to learn, but it gets easier over time.