Group items tagged

How do you identify and avoid spreading misinformation, myths, and urban legends on the internet?

employ a healthy level of skepticism for what you're reading, watching, or otherwise consuming—on the internet or elsewhere

Snopes is "the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation"—and for the most part, it actually does live up to that goal.

a world renowned expert on the English language tackling the myths (as he sees it) of texting and Twitter corrupting the language and leading to a generation that cannot spell and finds it hard to express themselves in more than a few clipped sentences.

The reason we find it easy to believe the internet is making us dumber is because, in some ways, it's making us less self-reliant. Our GPS devices navigate for us and we neglect to remember things because we have Google search. That doesn't make us dumber, necessarily, but rather causes us to rely more on what psychologist Daniel Wagner calls transactive memory. This type of memory is actually very useful because it allows us to, in essence, store more data in less space.