I read an article this morning on the New York Times - Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?
The entire article was interesting, discussing different skills gained by reading online vs. reading books, as well as the concern that online reading may fracture attention spans, making reading books that much more difficult.
What really jumped out at me, though, was this:
Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site (http://www.zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/) about a mythical species known as the “Pacific Northwest tree octopus.” Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source (emphasis mine).
Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus
I’m wondering if this lack of critical thinking skills is a side effect of all the information available on the Internet, or if the Internet has just exposed a wider problem, the fundamental lack of critical thinking by a majority of the US population.
This subject has been on my mind recently, due in part to family members who send e-mails “proving” that the presidential candidate they do not support did something horrible, and therefore is obviously not qualified to be leader of the free world, commander-in-chief, etc. These emails amount to little more than character assassination, and the scary thing is, people believe them and don’t bother to check the facts (easily done online) for themselves.
In the future, traditional reading skills may not be as important as the ability to determine reliable sources, and critical consideration — not just comprehension — of what is read.
