The Impact of Fake News and Misinformation Spreading on Children

Misinformation has been around for a while but it hasn't been focused on and shown to be an effect on the quality of life. The history of misinformation once said, “stream of completely made-up stories that seemed to originate from one small Eastern European town” according to “The (almost) complete history of “fake news”(2018). It was studied by Craig Silverman, he noticed a lot of made up stories coming from the same town. He said that at least 140 fake news sites were up getting huge numbers on Facebook. Furthermore they had so many fake news sites because they were making money out of it. This issue came to exist because as people moved on through the years they spread false info that led to the misinformation. Therefore misinformation is like spreading rumors and this as recent years led to bullying of the children in school.

This affects the quality of life because this fake or misinformation can play with the people and affect their decisions. People tend to trust things on the internet/social media from the first source. They do not tend to back it up with another source or go looking for a deeper meaning in it. Especially on a whole search engine such as Facebook where it is used by a lot of the younger set of people. While older people tend to go in deeper and try to find out more info on the subject. Or they get more interested in the subject. The teenager age is a generation where they just read and go, and with that info, they read it and talk about it.

The most affected by this issue are the people that use social media, which is a wide selection of people. These people come across thing such as, “you are exposed to a daily dose of hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories, and misleading news” based on “Misinformation on”(2016). This population is affected the most because they are the ones that use social media, so they are exposed to most of the misinformation and depending on the info it can spread fast. The more affected by this misinformation “to explore the beneficial and harmful effects of media on children’s mental and physical health” based on (“Impact of media use on children and youth”2003). The children are affected because they are the generation that uses social media/ internet in general. Based on an experiment done on twitter between a false and true tweet“the tweet that was true did really badly at getting retweets. While the false tweet went viral” according to Chris (2018). So information spreads really fast and most of the time they are unaware if it is true, false, or just misinformation.

This issue is important because in multiple genres there can be misinformation, this info can also be misleading as it is false. Add to it people that believe the things they see from the first time, news spreads fast. Whether is the first time they see it or the third, the more the person sees it the more they believe it. Even if they know it is misinformation or not “One concern is that students sometimes indiscriminately forward misinformation”(2015). The compelling need to address this issue is that there are many problems that occur from having or spreading misinformation. The misinformation can be from a bigger perspective and can be seen as a bad thing for the celebrity people as they have made up and false things said about them all the time. The people that make this misinformation and spread it are getting paid to do this, as they are making a living out of spreading misinformation. That is the kind of example that is being set for the younger generation, to be perceived that it is an alright thing to be spreading misinformation on purpose. Such as the teenage or children group ay spread information about each other and whether they know if it is correct hey will be giving it to each other. That can lead to a bigger issue of bullying.

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