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This is just a hypothesis, but I believe that one of the roots of the problem is a lower ability to retrieve information, caused by increased exposure to advertisement.
Regardless of the above, the problem is actually a big deal, once you consider things like meta-information (such as truth value and reliability of a claim) being also information; so if people don't get info on their own, it's easy to misinform them. So it isn't the muppet failing to see "this is a Lebbit story" and screeching at the "actress" of that video, it's also a similar muppet saying shit like "ivermectin cures covid" or "jet fuel is making the frogs gay".
This is just a hypothesis, but I believe that one of the roots of the problem is a lower ability to retrieve information, caused by increased exposure to advertisement.
I'm not sure I follow where you're coming from here. Is the idea that over-exposure to advertisement is processed the same as being provided general information, reducing people's inclination to seek out information independently, despite the fact that advertising is only the provision of specific, narrow information?
I think that we have a limited ability to process (absorb, analyse, retrieve what's meaningful, discard what's meaningless) information as a whole, that is used to process both general and narrow info. And, when we go considerably past our limits to process info, our brains start taking "shortcuts" to process the info that we're exposed to, such as:
- simplifying meta-info, such as the truth value of the info
- some types of fallacious thinking
- disregarding bits of info that are highly visible, because they are not central or expected
- using the "default" way to obtain new, relevant info (asking it), even when other means would be desirable
And that some things demand quite a bit of that "processing info" ability; for example
- Discarding meaningless info, specially when associated with a stronger and/or repetitive stimulus
- Look for missing bits of info on what's said, as the unspoken consequences of what you're being told to do.
That's advertisement in a nutshell - people telling you what you should do, without telling you all things that you need to know, in a flashy and repetitive way. And it applies specially well to online advertisement.
It wouldn't be just advertisement doing it, mind you; but I do think that advertisement plays a huge role.
If the reasoning above is correct, this should be affecting all of us, not just GenZ and GenΑ. And we could even hypothesise if it's affecting them more than GenX and GenY, as well as why:
- perhaps GenZ+Α are more exposed to advertisement than GenX+Y?
- perhaps it affects them the most because the way that you process info depends mostly on childhood+adolescence, so GenX+Y never had the chance to ingrain those "shortcuts" to begin with?
Just my two cents, mind you. I wouldn't be surprised if all the above was false; I still felt that it was worth sharing. [Sorry for the long reply.]
Thanks for elaborating!
I think I better see what you meant now. Potential degradations in processing ability possibly from a combination of cognitive overload and exhaustion from the volumes of information encountered, both of which may be more frequently reached from a mixture of a lack of self-regulation, not knowing & exceeding one's limits, and inadequate education and practice regarding the former two alongside reasoning abilities to more effectively navigate info without as often being overloaded/exhausted.