According to research done at the University of Cambridge, it’s Millennials and Gen Z’ers.

“University of Cambridge psychologists have developed the first validated ‘misinformation susceptibility test’: a quick two-minute quiz that gives a solid indication of how vulnerable a person is to being duped by the kind of fabricated news that floods online spaces,” starts the University’s June 28, 2023 post.

The researchers found “…that younger adults are worse than older adults at identifying false headlines, and that the more time someone spent online recreationally, the less likely they were to be able to tell real news from misinformation.”

The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Behavior Research Methods. The polling results can be accessed at YouGov US website.

Are you gullible? Find out. Take the test yourself at https://yourmist.streamlit.app/, answering 20 true/false questions. The factual sources for the answers came from the likes of the Pew Research Center and Reuters while the false information was generated using ChatGPT version 2.

Dr. Rakoem Maertens, the lead researcher, said the results were “…eye-opening and alarming.” The post goes on to note that, “When it came to age, only 11% of 18- to 29-year-olds got a high score (more than 16 headlines correct), while 36% got a low score (10 headlines or fewer correct). By contrast, 36% of those 65 or older got a high score, while just 9% of older adults got a low score.” And Snapchat users were right only 4% of the time, the worst of the lot, followed by habitués of Truth Social, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Instagram.

The entire post can be accessed here: https://phys.org/news/2023-06-misinformation-susceptibility-online-gen-millennials.html?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=da3b935252-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_06_29_03_39&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-da3b935252-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

It seems that in today’s America, Democrats all think that Republicans are racist hate mongers and Republican think that Democrats are radicals working to destroy the country. Why is that?

Anyone who has been paying any attention to what is going on is already familiar with the term “echo chamber,” meaning that each “side” tends to listen, watch, or read only content that reinforces their tendencies and biases. This is true but it is not sufficient to explain what is going on.

I have been subscribing to “Tangle,” an online publication written by Isaac Saul in which he discusses various issues of the day and presents three summaries, two with the views of the opposing sides of the issue at hand (e.g. abortion’s “pro-choice” and “pro-life”) and then adds his own two cents. I find him to be pretty even-handed in his analyses.

And on Friday he always publishes a special edition that is available only to subscribers. Today he started off with this headline: “Why do we hate each other?”

It’s a long read. Saul grants permission to subscribers to distribute his musings far and wide without any restriction, so I am not violating any copyrights here by including the entire content as a PDF.

He makes a very important point well into his piece: The media today are different than they used to be. Once they at least attempted to be objective, even though biases always seem to have a way to inject themselves into even the most well-intended reporting. But this is no longer true. Now the “mainstream” media have all become advocates. It’s the Washington Post vs. Fox News. There’s no middle ground.

And that’s bad for all of us. I don’t know what we can do about it, but as the old adage goes, the first step to overcoming a problem is to recognize that there IS a problem. Read this piece and I think you will see that problem quite clearly. You can download it if you like.