Like Fox News, Social Media makes you dumber

The Pew Research Center has just released a study which likely confirms what many might have thought already. While the results may seem like common sense, it is very important to actually research this and make sure that "common sense" is actually true. 

The study is quite detailed and the authors go to great lengths to explain their methodology and present their evidence. Here is the authors presenting their main take away from this survey:

A new Pew Research Center analysis of surveys conducted between October 2019 and June 2020 finds that those who rely most on social media for political news stand apart from other news consumers in a number of ways. These U.S. adults, for instance, tend to be less likely than other news consumers to closely follow major news stories, such as the coronavirus outbreak and the 2020 presidential election. And, perhaps tied to that, this group also tends to be less knowledgeable about these topics.

As we can see, people who get their information from social media know less about topics than people who get information from other sources, and furthermore, people who primarily get their news from social media have a greater chance of holding false beliefs than people who get their news from other sources. 

h/t to The Washington Post