Since quarantine and lockdowns began, I’ve spent a lot of time on Tik Tok. Anyone who has Tik Tok knows that millions of people use the app for posting funny videos, dancing, and other things. Nonetheless, another huge thing that Tik Tok spreads is misinformation.
Unfortunately, Tik Tok wouldn’t be the first social media that has spread misinformation. The Atlantic reports a massive new study that “analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence — some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years.” They found that “by every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter.” The study went on to say that “fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories.”
From personal experience, I have scrolled through Twitter and seen how stories can spread like wildfire. In a world where social media is so readily available and accessible, I can’t blame people for receiving their news from these sources. At the same time, it is important to be wary of information received from social media. For example, an elderly couple from Arizona made the mistake of trying a medicine that had not been proven by the FDA to decrease their risk of contracting the coronavirus. The Washington Post reports that the couple ingested a fish tank cleaning chemical, and in less than an hour, they were admitted to the ER. Unfortunately, the husband passed away, and the wife is in critical condition.
So why is it so easy for misinformation to spread? Psychology Today published “information on social media doesn’t have to be vetted, investigated, or confirmed in order to spread, and this leads to misinformation and unsubstantiated rumors spreading like wildfire online. In the past few years, the online misinformation ecosystem has developed: a large, decentralized web of ‘news’ sources that plagiarize, jump to unwarranted conclusions, fail to vet sources adequately, or simply fabricate information.” Once information is spread, it is hard to make online users forget about it.
Another thing that social media has been responsible for is dangerous trends. For example, in 2017-2018, a “Tide Pod” challenge circulated the internet, and teenagers were daring each other to ingest tide pods. Of course, many people thought, who would actually ingest a tide pod? According to the Washington Post, “U.S. poison control centers received reports of more than 10,500 children younger than five who were exposed to the capsules. The same year, nearly 220 teens were reportedly exposed, and about 25% of those cases were intentional, according to data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers.”
In such a time of uncertainty especially with the coronavirus, what is most important is spreading accurate information to the public. Harvard Health lists these online sources to rely on for valid medical knowledge: Medline Plus, the UK’s National Health Service, the US Food and Drug Administration, and major news outlets with deep expertise in health reporting, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe’s STAT News.
When people are in a panic, they tend to cling to any source of information available to them. This is what the online scammers and hoaxers rely on: people’s fear and ignorance. Some of the hoaxes about COVID-19 have been spread by famous individuals who do more harm than good. An influencer named “Brother Nature,” well-known for his viral videos with animals posted information about the coronavirus that was completely false. It was screenshots from a notes app, with advice regarding how to stop the spread of the virus. The list contained things like: “Coronavirus is pneumonia with a runny nose” or that “Drinking water will kill the Coronavirus.”
The list has since been debunked, but not before it had spread through Whatsapp, Twitter and Facebook. Buzzfeed News has a running list of hoaxes to spread awareness to the public about the virus and keep people informed. As a social media consumer, remind yourself of the real and fake and don’t let fear consume you.
