Now days, everyone says, just Google it. However, how reliable is Google and why would you believe everything that you see or read on the internet or through Google. Just a few years ago there was a commercial that made fun of the internet. It was an advertisement for State Farm Insurance. Without trying to explain the whole commercial, the quick synopsis of the commercial was that a man was standing next to his car explaining to a cute blond girl that State Farm had a great new app that gave you the ability to pay your bill and even submit an accident report on your cell phone. The girl expressed her disbelief, because she had read on the internet that what this gentleman was telling her was not true. He then asked her, do believe everything that you read on the internet? She said yes, “they can’t put anything on the internet that isn’t true.” Then all of a sudden her boyfriend shows up, whom she recently met on the internet and who is supposedly a French model. Yes, you guessed it, he wasn’t a model, wasn’t French and the internet and her new boyfriend lied to her.
As a new millennial, many young adults in my generation have grown up using the internet as a resource, even more so than books and periodicals. For that reason, it is understandable that the internet has become in many cases the only research tool that my generation uses. However, in a world of questionable information that has now created a new term called “Fake News,” how can we be assured that what we read or research on the internet is factual? The answer is, WE CAN’T! The internet, when used wisely, is a great resource tool that can save countless hours in research as long as you substantiate your information.
The best way to confirm your research when using the internet is to realize that all answers to all questions can be changed or manipulated based on every single word that goes into your question or the direction of your thoughts. As an example, if you were doing a research paper on “Voting laws in America.” Just by adding the word pro or con, would change the entire direction of the information that the internet pulled up for you to review and the majority of the articles would have a bias in one direction or the other. Also, you will find that the information that is pulled up will also change almost every time you access the internet. There are no absolutes when using the internet, the same question will be used at different times while using different search engines will present different results. The most effective way to utilize the information that we gather from the internet is to verify, substantiate, and verify again.