The Question and Answer Board

[IH Admin [Shelly]]

Wow, this was such an epiphany for me on different levels...

I have a 13 year old who has regularly been fussed at for stating things like "did you know?" or "I heard"..." and then parroting something seemingly ridiculous (in our current world there's so many bizarre things that it's hard to deride anything as "unbelievable" at this point).

I read this article and it was such an epiphany for me that this is not just her challenge, but something that her entire peer group seemed to be falling for. It's self perpetuating at some point. It helped me understand that this is "their world" and, we need to help break them of this cycle.

I sent this to my younger daughter, my husband, my Mom and my 19 year old daughter because it just really hit a nerve with me about the generation who truly grew up with the internet as the source of all knowledge.

My older daughter, who is a Journalism major, replied back something like - "You know that Daily Mail is not considered a reliable source in any way. Even Wikipedia doesn't recognize when sourced from there". (I didn't research this and not sure if she knows what she's talking about, BUT, not pertinent to the rest of my point.)

I don't know if my older daughter initially recognized the irony in me embracing a source that I knew nothing about while trusting that article enough that I chose to send it to those closest to me as a reminder to "not believe everything they read on the internet".

I mean, wow.

Edit - forgot to add that after my oldest daughter's comments, I did research it further and, rightly or wrongly, I do consider Snopes a reliable source:

https://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/treeoctopus.asp