> Rowlands et al. wrote about the so called “digital natives” that they lack the critical and analytical thinking skills to evaluate the information they find on the internet.

This doesn't match the cultural shift in the last 20 years. A generation of people grew up with chat rooms and immediately discovered the ability to misrepresent oneself on the internet. "On the internet, no one knows you're a dog", as they say. That whole demographic assumes that media is lying by default. Compare that to previous generations that trusted certain media institutions like cable news, newspapers, radio shows, etc. because the production value and scarcity of media instilled trust.

Trust in media institutions is at an all time low, and will likely never recover. That has to be attributed to the newer generations. They are more skeptical of propaganda than ever before. To them, the high production value media outlets are just a quaint legacy variety of content slop.

Well it doesn't help that the media, even when it doesn't lie, often simply refuses to report on various issues depending on the whims of producers.

I'm an older millennial, probably one of the last generations who was formally taught that organizations like the New York Times and CNN were authoritative, bibliography-worthy sources of information due to their reputation and standards. I haven't cared much about what either outlet has produced in years. For every good investigative piece there's a mountain of obvious propaganda or refusal to cover topics they find uncomfortable with any objectivity.

The signal to noise ratio is so low, why pay attention? There's a lot of bad takes on twitter and non-mainstream media (to put it mildly) but it at least makes me aware of more things.

> That has to be attributed to the newer generations. They are more skeptical of propaganda than ever before. To them, the high production value media outlets are just a quaint legacy variety of content slop.

Right. The skeptical newer generation knows better. It's the generation that is immune to influence. They're so resistant to it that they've finally driven advertisers to realize that spamming YouTube, IG, TikTok, with ads peddling some new hype every week is pointless.

Sarcasm aside, the newer generation, in any generation, is always as naive as they're said to be. You're not born with wisdom and your parents can't save you from the candle fire, no matter how much they try. Sooner or later, you'll have to burn that finger to learn. Life is an experience game. No way around it.

> That whole demographic assumes that media is lying by default.

Yes. And then they turn around and trust that the Boston Marathon Bomber was some random kid because Reddit said so.

The new generation of netizens distrusts classic media and then suddenly trusts Reddit and Google searches and random blogs.

Bad Twitter arguments citing YouTube videos talking about a Redditors problem about Microsoft Updates and SSDs just broke through a week or two ago and nearly everyone involved in the discussion is utterly wrong.

> If anything the newer generation is more skeptical of propaganda than ever before.

Laughs in Polish GenZ voting for Konfederacja (alt-right)

> They are more skeptical of propaganda than ever before.

Of boomer propaganda. But don't worry, as voters evolve, so does propaganda.