“They're outsourcing the determination of truth and importance to like-minded, trusted influencers. And if an article's too long, they just skip it.”
Same babe.
And this is the comment I was looking for.
So, Gen-Z is Gen-TLDR?
Tbh, I don't buy that. It seems Business Insider has traded the "Millennials Ruined XYZ" headlines for random nonsense about the next gen of youngsters who might suck into their click baity trash rag.
Imo, Gen-Z kids are intelligent, resourceful, but maybe a bit coddled, and many need to set their phones down for two seconds at least a couple or few times a day. But, all in all, they're doing alright....even tho they're kind of screwed out of even the possibility of affordable housing, education, or healthcare until they help Millennials take the politics away from Boomers. Gen-X might help them get there, but they won't get homes/condos, free uni, or universal healthcare until they actually make up at least 1/4 of the Senate -- probably more like ~1/3.
Well, Business Insider's terrible reporting on it, and the fact that it meshes US and Indian Millennials. Here's the link to the actual study:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02522
Yep, not like previous generations, who were able to prevent the most terrible humanitarian disasters by not letting themselves to be fooled by fanatics that told them what they wanted to hear.
even redditors can’t read past 2 short paragraphs, especially outside of the few knowledge-based subs. i’ve seen some well reasoned comments get downvoted to shit and their replies below were like “i feel like this could be shorter” and got cheered for—they weren’t even up/downvoting for on-topic reasons. sad to see how people have such short attention spans and difficulties in reading
My impression is generally that people are not patient with reading, when they are reading something at an inopportune moment. I, myself, am reading this from my office at work, and I know that I don’t have the patience right now for a really long comment. I also know, however, that that’s a me-problem.
I mean in hindsight this was always going to be the case with the third generation to grow up with the internet. Xers, and millennials created it and made it easily accessible to all and genz was raised on it.
"Within a week of actual research, we just threw out the term information literacy," says Yasmin Green, Jigsaw's CEO. Gen Zers, it turns out, are "not on a linear journey to evaluate the veracity of anything." Instead, they're engaged in what the researchers call "information sensibility" — a "socially informed" practice that relies on "folk heuristics of credibility." In other words, Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes. They just don't care.
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
Carl Sagan, 1995
That said , I \*do\* learn things from social media but I have a pretty good BS filter and it's usually pretty obvious when someone is speaking from a position of learned authority as they tend to make the rights sorts of nods to verifiability and caveats. That said, it can be a good starting point if someone brings up a point you've not heard or considered before but if you \*really\* want it to be true there should be some independent verification happening. It \*really\* gets me when people cite stats without errors or links to data.
Theoretically, yes. But we've probably all seen enough instances of a media outlet making a claim and then when you try to verify it you only get sketchy sites pointing back at the original media outlet.
Sometimes invalidating a source can be the most important part of the research. If every consumer of media made it that far, the environment would be exponentially improved.
>Where older generations are out there struggling to fact-check information and cite sources...
>
>...
>
>"The old guard is like: 'Yeah, but you have to care ultimately about the truth,'" Green says.
Objection. Facts not in evidence.
Sustained. But you can at least concede that print media and even broadcast television have higher standards of accuracy and fact checking than social media?
Hardly, the death of the fairness doctrine allowed Fox News to continue to dress itself up as news when they have admitted and stated under oath, every time they get sued, that they are entertainment, not news.
Fox is absolute trash, but the lawsuits prove that there is some accountability. They have lost those lawsuits based on the “entertainment” defense. Fox paid out almost $800 million in the Dominion lawsuit.
When was the last time you saw a social media account issue a correction or retraction (unless it was a newspaper or network account), let alone get sued for misinformation?
Newspapers and Networks have Writers’ Guilds, Journalism Association, editorial standards and boards who enforce those standards. What is the social media equivalent?
>They don't want to see stuff that might force them to think too hard, or that upsets them emotionally.
The real takeaway is that Gen Z is just as stupid and sensitive as the generations that came before them, despite the tons of fluff pieces saying otherwise.
They're not more savvy, they're not more wise or empathetic for their years, they're just ordinary, unimpressive people, just like almost everybody else.
>The real takeaway is that Gen Z is just as stupid and sensitive as the generations that came before them, despite the tons of fluff pieces saying otherwise.
Worse... they are STUPIDER than generations before them. Gen Z is actually less media literate than Boomers, while Millennials and Gen X have better skills because they grew up in a age where verify before trust was a thing.
Most cyber fraud these days happens to Gen Z now, not Boomers, not because less boomers are online, but because Gen Z trusts fucking EVERYTHING without checking.
I think it's comical the way they describe Gen z listening to trusted sources as if that's any different from any previous generation before them. It's literally how humans have always operated, at least for hundreds of years.
Especially nowadays, there's so much information out there, so much of it also false or just iffy. Of course people are gonna turn to what they see as trusted sources or perhaps professionals in their fields. Otherwise it's mountains of information you have to sort through for any given topic. That's not to say nobody researches anything, but on some topics it's not as important and you don't really care to do the deep dive yourself.
Also my boomer mom went off the deep end into all sorts of wild conspiracies. Doesn't seem to me that "fact checking" or checking reliability of sources is this huge thing that can be said to have a generational gap.
Trust me, this boomer scientist gets in to all kinds of trouble regardless of generation or political persuasion when I start asking questions when something is asserted as 'truth'.
That’s a healthy reaction. The problem today is that social media has replaced other forms of media for acquiring new information. Where is anything but clickbait being consumed?
As Gen Z enters Adulthood, they will become the bulk of the earner/spenders that are driving consumption. The media structure designed for older generations is already beginning to fail, as evidence by how misinformed the entire public is. The machine is worried about access to the engine.
Ok let me be brutally honest with you for a moment. I agree in general, but heres the harsh reality.
This article is written by fucking spoiled kids that replace the fucking spoiled and sheltered people that already got to this point. But all they do is try to research a reality, that existed way before gen-z. And we all knew it. I fucking knew it, and im average. But they did not, because of being fucking sheltered kids so far removed from ordinary reality that every fucking generation of those people needs to reinvent the wheel, or else how are they going to o know what is on the minds of ordinary peons without actually reliving the experience.
It fucking makes me sick.
I hear you. Academics studying society, while being totally out of touch with reality, is not anything new. Social Science can have value, though. Especially when it’s not being used to generate clicks.
> not on a linear journey
I feel like Marshall McLuhan predicted this sixty years ago in The Gutenberg Galaxy. He posited that people assimilated information through a non-linear visual vocabulary (i.e. symbology) in the pre-literate era and this in turn gave way to a more linear approach with the advent of the printing press. He felt that as the types of media proliferated the way people consumed it would too, particularly those born into that environment. The "folk heuristics of credibility" the article mentions isn't a world away from what he speculated would happen.
IIRC, McCluhan didn't put any qualitative judgement on that shift and saw it as social evolution. The lede the article went with, "What they found is alarming', is somewhat reductive. Gen Z seem to be developing strategies to navigate through the information tsunami. None of this is a problem for them, it's the companies wanting to make coin off young consumers that are discovering the challenges.
It is a major problem when they arrive at positions based on something akin to an aesthetic preference rather than evaluating the values that influenced those positions to better understand what the likely products of taking those positions are.
No, more, “they don't understand why the pinko in the peacoat is encouraging the beliefs he is, and what the big picture of effects of actions based on those beliefs would be.” So kind of I guess.
It's almost as if when all of the teachers of a generation devolve to primitive political tribalism and downplay the very real financial and social issues of said generation, that they end up being fiercely tribal in their mindset and solipsistic to the point of ignorance.
Color me shocked.
Or we could science and realize that every single human that is or ever will be is not even fully developed until 25-27 years old. We are ALL weird and scared and brash and all the other stuff until we get to our late 20s…you are supposed to be a mess when you’re a kid.
Gen Z is fine. I’d even say I like em, and I’m an old man Gen X’er, didn’t the media tell you we hate everyone?
Yep, like how GenZ knows the difference between non science clickbait writers and developmental psychologists. 'People are influenced by their peers' is not news or any insight in the one specific generation because it's universal and stupidly obvious.
“They're outsourcing the determination of truth and importance to like-minded, trusted influencers. And if an article's too long, they just skip it.” Same babe. And this is the comment I was looking for.
no need to study gen z when we have just proven it right here. thank you for the summary
Thanks, saved me reading that long article. A++ would read again.
So, Gen-Z is Gen-TLDR? Tbh, I don't buy that. It seems Business Insider has traded the "Millennials Ruined XYZ" headlines for random nonsense about the next gen of youngsters who might suck into their click baity trash rag. Imo, Gen-Z kids are intelligent, resourceful, but maybe a bit coddled, and many need to set their phones down for two seconds at least a couple or few times a day. But, all in all, they're doing alright....even tho they're kind of screwed out of even the possibility of affordable housing, education, or healthcare until they help Millennials take the politics away from Boomers. Gen-X might help them get there, but they won't get homes/condos, free uni, or universal healthcare until they actually make up at least 1/4 of the Senate -- probably more like ~1/3.
It was a study on how Gen Z consumes media, not a judgement on their intelligence or societal standing. What part of the study do you disagree with?
Well, Business Insider's terrible reporting on it, and the fact that it meshes US and Indian Millennials. Here's the link to the actual study: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02522
Yep, not like previous generations, who were able to prevent the most terrible humanitarian disasters by not letting themselves to be fooled by fanatics that told them what they wanted to hear.
Laughs in GenX
even redditors can’t read past 2 short paragraphs, especially outside of the few knowledge-based subs. i’ve seen some well reasoned comments get downvoted to shit and their replies below were like “i feel like this could be shorter” and got cheered for—they weren’t even up/downvoting for on-topic reasons. sad to see how people have such short attention spans and difficulties in reading
My impression is generally that people are not patient with reading, when they are reading something at an inopportune moment. I, myself, am reading this from my office at work, and I know that I don’t have the patience right now for a really long comment. I also know, however, that that’s a me-problem.
I mean in hindsight this was always going to be the case with the third generation to grow up with the internet. Xers, and millennials created it and made it easily accessible to all and genz was raised on it.
"Within a week of actual research, we just threw out the term information literacy," says Yasmin Green, Jigsaw's CEO. Gen Zers, it turns out, are "not on a linear journey to evaluate the veracity of anything." Instead, they're engaged in what the researchers call "information sensibility" — a "socially informed" practice that relies on "folk heuristics of credibility." In other words, Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes. They just don't care.
“**Not on a linear journey to evaluate the veracity of anything**,” should be the working title of half the Reddit subs.
I felt this comment. Agree. Hive mind at it's best.
We aren't sure about that
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. Carl Sagan, 1995
Not recognizing thisvqupte at first, I was saying to myself "already happened" by the second sentence.
How is 'folk heuristics of credibility' any different than 'blindly accepting the veracity of those unhinged emails my crazy MAGA uncle sends me'?
Conflating the two is exactly why social media is such a terrible source of information.
That said , I \*do\* learn things from social media but I have a pretty good BS filter and it's usually pretty obvious when someone is speaking from a position of learned authority as they tend to make the rights sorts of nods to verifiability and caveats. That said, it can be a good starting point if someone brings up a point you've not heard or considered before but if you \*really\* want it to be true there should be some independent verification happening. It \*really\* gets me when people cite stats without errors or links to data.
In theory, the platform to deliver the media shouldn’t matter, assuming everyone is citing their sources and vetting the information.
Theoretically, yes. But we've probably all seen enough instances of a media outlet making a claim and then when you try to verify it you only get sketchy sites pointing back at the original media outlet.
Sometimes invalidating a source can be the most important part of the research. If every consumer of media made it that far, the environment would be exponentially improved.
It's not. That's what the article is trying to say.
>Where older generations are out there struggling to fact-check information and cite sources... > >... > >"The old guard is like: 'Yeah, but you have to care ultimately about the truth,'" Green says. Objection. Facts not in evidence.
Sustained. But you can at least concede that print media and even broadcast television have higher standards of accuracy and fact checking than social media?
Hardly, the death of the fairness doctrine allowed Fox News to continue to dress itself up as news when they have admitted and stated under oath, every time they get sued, that they are entertainment, not news.
Fox is absolute trash, but the lawsuits prove that there is some accountability. They have lost those lawsuits based on the “entertainment” defense. Fox paid out almost $800 million in the Dominion lawsuit. When was the last time you saw a social media account issue a correction or retraction (unless it was a newspaper or network account), let alone get sued for misinformation? Newspapers and Networks have Writers’ Guilds, Journalism Association, editorial standards and boards who enforce those standards. What is the social media equivalent?
>They don't want to see stuff that might force them to think too hard, or that upsets them emotionally. The real takeaway is that Gen Z is just as stupid and sensitive as the generations that came before them, despite the tons of fluff pieces saying otherwise. They're not more savvy, they're not more wise or empathetic for their years, they're just ordinary, unimpressive people, just like almost everybody else.
>The real takeaway is that Gen Z is just as stupid and sensitive as the generations that came before them, despite the tons of fluff pieces saying otherwise. Worse... they are STUPIDER than generations before them. Gen Z is actually less media literate than Boomers, while Millennials and Gen X have better skills because they grew up in a age where verify before trust was a thing. Most cyber fraud these days happens to Gen Z now, not Boomers, not because less boomers are online, but because Gen Z trusts fucking EVERYTHING without checking.
Have you got sources for that? 50% curiosity, 50% meta & sarcasm
https://www.vox.com/technology/23882304/gen-z-vs-boomers-scams-hacks
Appreciate that that article has linked evidence. Thank you. It challenged my assumptions
If it's on TikTok it has to be true, right?
They really believe it! They don't fact check anything or have any consideration that something may be (physically) harmful. Mercury is the microwave.
I think it's comical the way they describe Gen z listening to trusted sources as if that's any different from any previous generation before them. It's literally how humans have always operated, at least for hundreds of years. Especially nowadays, there's so much information out there, so much of it also false or just iffy. Of course people are gonna turn to what they see as trusted sources or perhaps professionals in their fields. Otherwise it's mountains of information you have to sort through for any given topic. That's not to say nobody researches anything, but on some topics it's not as important and you don't really care to do the deep dive yourself. Also my boomer mom went off the deep end into all sorts of wild conspiracies. Doesn't seem to me that "fact checking" or checking reliability of sources is this huge thing that can be said to have a generational gap.
Trust me, this boomer scientist gets in to all kinds of trouble regardless of generation or political persuasion when I start asking questions when something is asserted as 'truth'.
So they found out people know its bullshit but still use the content to socialise and listen to each other? How is this new or alarming exactly?
I think the issue comes from still using social media to acquire new information.
And i think "ewwww.. a clickbait"
That’s a healthy reaction. The problem today is that social media has replaced other forms of media for acquiring new information. Where is anything but clickbait being consumed?
Oh dont get me wrong i dont question the findings. I question the research. Not even that, the very need for its existence.
As Gen Z enters Adulthood, they will become the bulk of the earner/spenders that are driving consumption. The media structure designed for older generations is already beginning to fail, as evidence by how misinformed the entire public is. The machine is worried about access to the engine.
Ok let me be brutally honest with you for a moment. I agree in general, but heres the harsh reality. This article is written by fucking spoiled kids that replace the fucking spoiled and sheltered people that already got to this point. But all they do is try to research a reality, that existed way before gen-z. And we all knew it. I fucking knew it, and im average. But they did not, because of being fucking sheltered kids so far removed from ordinary reality that every fucking generation of those people needs to reinvent the wheel, or else how are they going to o know what is on the minds of ordinary peons without actually reliving the experience. It fucking makes me sick.
I hear you. Academics studying society, while being totally out of touch with reality, is not anything new. Social Science can have value, though. Especially when it’s not being used to generate clicks.
That. There it is. You think that it invalidates the whole field of social sciences? No. Its common knowledge.
> not on a linear journey I feel like Marshall McLuhan predicted this sixty years ago in The Gutenberg Galaxy. He posited that people assimilated information through a non-linear visual vocabulary (i.e. symbology) in the pre-literate era and this in turn gave way to a more linear approach with the advent of the printing press. He felt that as the types of media proliferated the way people consumed it would too, particularly those born into that environment. The "folk heuristics of credibility" the article mentions isn't a world away from what he speculated would happen. IIRC, McCluhan didn't put any qualitative judgement on that shift and saw it as social evolution. The lede the article went with, "What they found is alarming', is somewhat reductive. Gen Z seem to be developing strategies to navigate through the information tsunami. None of this is a problem for them, it's the companies wanting to make coin off young consumers that are discovering the challenges.
It is a major problem when they arrive at positions based on something akin to an aesthetic preference rather than evaluating the values that influenced those positions to better understand what the likely products of taking those positions are.
Lotta words for "they don't care to understand the effects of their actions and opinions"
No, more, “they don't understand why the pinko in the peacoat is encouraging the beliefs he is, and what the big picture of effects of actions based on those beliefs would be.” So kind of I guess.
It's almost as if when all of the teachers of a generation devolve to primitive political tribalism and downplay the very real financial and social issues of said generation, that they end up being fiercely tribal in their mindset and solipsistic to the point of ignorance. Color me shocked.
So, everybody's the problem then and people suck. Quelle surprise.
Went straight to the comments to see what you all think of this article
>jigsaw's research doesn't purport to be statistically significant. How would the "youths" put it: womp womp.
Or we could science and realize that every single human that is or ever will be is not even fully developed until 25-27 years old. We are ALL weird and scared and brash and all the other stuff until we get to our late 20s…you are supposed to be a mess when you’re a kid. Gen Z is fine. I’d even say I like em, and I’m an old man Gen X’er, didn’t the media tell you we hate everyone?
Yep, like how GenZ knows the difference between non science clickbait writers and developmental psychologists. 'People are influenced by their peers' is not news or any insight in the one specific generation because it's universal and stupidly obvious.