Social media has handed us—Gen Z especially—an incredible gift: the ability to access more information, from more perspectives, in less time than any previous generation could have imagined. We can scroll through breaking news, watch a lecture from a Nobel laureate, fact-check a politician in seconds, and hear voices that used to be silenced. But this gift has a shadow. The same open highways that allow knowledge to travel also allow falsehoods to spread at unprecedented speed. It’s like being given a library where every aisle also has a loudspeaker playing someone’s confident guess. A misleading video can reach millions before a careful correction even leaves a researcher’s desk, and by the time the truth catches up, the lie has already shaped how people think. The World Health Organization calls this condition an infodemic: an overwhelming flood of information, including false and misleading content, that spreads through digital and physical environments, particularly during disease outbreaks. Although the word was born in a health crisis, it now describes our everyday reality. Politics, climate change, vaccines, nutrition, history, economics—every field is polluted by half-truths, cherry-picked data, and outright lies. We are drowning in content and starving for context. The common answer is to become more skeptical, but skepticism by itself isn’t enough. Endless doubt just leaves us confused, exhausted, and vulnerable to whoever shouts the loudest. What we need is a renewed reliance on people who actually know what they’re talking about: experts. This doesn’t mean treating them as infallible priests. It means recognizing that expertise is a form of earned trust, built on years of study, testing, peer review, and the humility to admit when they’re wrong. The danger is that, right now, expertise is being deliberately dismantled—and that dismantling has consequences far beyond bruised egos. When we no longer know who to trust, we don’t become more free. We become more lost, more afraid, and more dependent on algorithms that don’t care what’s true.
One of the clearest ways expertise is being dismantled is at the highest levels of government and culture. Political leaders have always questioned scientists and journalists, but the current moment feels more aggressive. Tom Nichols wrote a book called The Death of Expertise that traces how authority has collapsed in America, and the trend has only accelerated since. Government officials openly mock research they dislike, propose cuts to science funding, and put grants containing terms they disapprove of at risk. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services is a case in point. A prominent anti-vaccine activist was asked to manage the country’s health agencies. Whatever your politics, the decision sent a clear signal: ideological loyalty matters more than public health experience. The result is a steady decline in confidence in federal institutions and scientists. But the threat to expertise isn’t only political. It is also cultural. Media literacy has quietly collapsed. Teachers report that students cannot tell opinion from fact, don’t know what makes a source credible, and trust whatever the algorithm puts in front of them. Maybe you’ve seen a friend share a miracle cure or a relative post a shocking statistic with no link to a source. That isn’t a moral failure; it’s a symptom of a system that trains us to react instead of reflect. Many people accept AI-generated summaries as absolute truth, even though AI is known to hallucinate—to invent facts with total confidence. Studies even link heavy reliance on AI to weaker critical thinking, as if our brains are outsourcing their best skill to a machine. Meanwhile, the internet has been reduced to rage bait, clickbait, and clip culture, where a ten-second excerpt outranks a nuanced report. When people say TL;DR, they are not just being lazy; they are announcing that complexity is no longer worth their time. And if that weren’t enough, experts who want to speak publicly face real risks. Political violence has become normalized, and online mobs can destroy a career in a single afternoon. Even music critics get mobbed by fan armies for writing a negative review; imagine what happens to a doctor who says a preferred therapy doesn’t work. The costs of dissent are too high, so many informed voices choose silence, which only deepens our collective ignorance.
Journalism is supposed to be the bridge between the public and the experts. A good reporter translates complex ideas, holds power accountable, and asks the questions ordinary citizens don’t have time to ask. But the institution that makes this possible is in serious trouble. Journalists are being replaced, in the public’s attention, by influencers and “thinkfluencers” who produce educational content with no editorial standards, no fact-checkers, and no accountability. The market rewards personality over accuracy, and that creates an impossible expectation: journalists now have to be influencers too, constantly posting, building personal brands, and competing for likes. Their working conditions are deteriorating at the same time. Many journalists earn low wages, if they earn anything at all. AI is increasingly used to write stories, which means fewer jobs and more unverified, formulaic content filling our feeds. The speed of the information cycle has also destroyed the time needed for careful reporting. A newspaper that once waited for the facts now has to compete with a smartphone video that goes viral in seconds. To survive, outlets cut corners, publish rumors, and then issue corrections that never travel as far as the original mistake. Think about your hometown. If the local paper is gone, who is covering the city council meeting, the school board budget, or the water main break? Public media, which should be an anchor of reliable journalism, is under constant budget pressure. In the U.S., the Trump administration has threatened to dismantle the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and imposed media access bans that have been challenged in court on First Amendment grounds. The cumulative effect is a news ecosystem where reliable information is harder to find, not because it doesn’t exist, but because it is being starved and outshouted. And when quality journalism disappears, the vacuum quickly fills with propaganda, entertainment, and algorithmic noise.
The consequences of this collapse are not abstract. They are showing up in emergency rooms, school boards, and town halls. Take the Make America Healthy Again initiative, which blended legitimate worries about chronic disease with a powerful current of vaccine misinformation. It helped weaken childhood vaccine recommendations in some states, and it didn’t take long for measles outbreaks to return. Diseases that were almost eliminated are coming back because we forgot how important expertise once was. The same pattern plays out on a smaller scale. Local news, especially in rural communities, is a lifeline. It tells people when a bridge is closed, what the water quality is, who is running for school board, and how to get help during a disaster. But the 2025 Recessions Act and other budget cuts have left many communities with fewer resources to relay critical information. When local newspapers shrink or disappear, residents are left with coverage that doesn’t understand their needs—or no coverage at all. Algorithms have also made political conversation more toxic. They push people into echo chambers, reward outrage, and make it harder to see opponents as human. The result is polarization and a chilling effect: people self-censor because they are afraid of being attacked online. Maybe you’ve hesitated before posting an opinion because you didn’t want the pile-on. That hesitation is a warning sign. Platforms add their own censorship, which only deepens the confusion about what is true and why. At the federal level, proposed cuts to research funding threaten to postpone life-saving science. Behind every budget line is someone waiting for a treatment, a clean-up, or a solution. We are all living with the consequences, whether we realize it or not.
None of this means we should throw the internet in the garbage. Social media can be a useful starting point—a way to learn that a topic exists, to hear different voices, and to discover questions you didn’t know to ask. But it is a doorway, not a classroom. If you want to understand an issue, you need to go deeper. Start by building media literacy. Learn to recognize bias. Ask who created a piece of information, where the money comes from, what is being left out, and what the original source actually says. Read beyond the headline. And above all, don’t engage with a post until you’ve verified it. Every share, like, and angry comment feeds the algorithm and amplifies the message. We’ve all done it—hit share on something that made us feel something, only to discover later that it was misleading. That impulse is exactly how misinformation wins. Diversify your sources. If your entire worldview comes from one app, one cable channel, or one side of the political spectrum, you are living in an echo chamber. Reading a source that challenges your beliefs is not a betrayal; it is an act of intellectual survival. In-person engagement is just as important. The internet flattens people into categories, but real conversation reminds us that people are messy, complicated, and not always wrong. And don’t forget to support journalism you trust. Subscribe to a local paper, share a reporter’s work, send a small donation. Reliable journalism is a public good, and it depends on people who are willing to pay for it. Finding reliable information is not a private hobby; it is a civic duty. When you vote, attend a town hall, or talk with your neighbors, you are making decisions based on what you believe. Critical thinking should be part of how you participate in society, not something you switch on only for exams.
At the end of the day, this is not a battle between smart people and ordinary people. It is a battle between care and carelessness. Experts are not always right, and journalists are not always fair. But both are essential to a functioning society. They are how we share what we know with people we will never meet. If we let them be destroyed by algorithms, rage, and budget cuts, we will have to solve the hardest problems of our time in the dark. The good news is that change starts with small, ordinary choices. Choose to read the whole article before you share it. Choose to support local journalism, even if that means paying for a subscription. Choose to ask a scientist or an historian what they actually think, rather than asking a chatbot what to think. Choose to be the person who says “I need to look that up” instead of the person who spreads the rumor. We are living through an information crisis, but we are not helpless. The antidote to misinformation is not cynicism, and it is not blind obedience to authority. It is a culture that values evidence, humility, and honest disagreement. It is a public that understands that knowledge is fragile and needs protection. It is also a commitment to use our attention carefully, because attention is what feeds the information environment. We don’t need to be perfect; we just need to be intentional. Every time you pause before sharing, you are teaching someone else that truth matters. Every time you admit you don’t know something, you are making room for learning. Every time you support an expert or a journalist who is under attack, you are building a community that values understanding over noise. If we starve the lies and nourish the truth, we can build something better. The future will not be destroyed by bad information. It will be saved by people who care enough to verify, listen, and think.