(01-09-2023, 01:01 PM)The Real Marty Wrote: I learned media literacy from Mad magazine.  For those of you too young to know what Mad magazine was, it was a satire magazine for kids.  They lampooned everything, especially the crap the media was feeding us.

When I was in middle school, our school library's computers got connected to the internet for the first time.  We all got the lecture about how "you can't believe everything you read on the internet." Some of us remember what teachers tell us.  Others do not.

Then we were the first ones to get on Facebook, those of us who went to college, anyhow.  Facebook was fun.  There wasn't a news feed in those days.  If you wanted to know what your friend was doing or thinking about, you had to go to their page first.

Then we watched our parents and their friends also get accounts.  Then we watched our peers who did not go to college get accounts. 

Then we watched those people all start to believe everything they read on the internet.  And they distributed their nonsense so much faster with the news feed, sharing stuff that they did not even read first. Got a lot less fun.

I commend NJ for trying, and they should try.  But I think there will always be enough kids that don't pay attention to the lesson, or don't remember the lesson, that misinformation will still spread.

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