Those don't seem like huge differences, given the large gaps in education and demographics.

That's your fact, not mine.

I suspect part of the problem in distinguishing truth vs opinion is that there wasn't an option for "I think this is false because I've been told otherwise for hours every day on talk radio." The worst performance was the older group identifying true statements that they probably don't want to reckon with (particularly the Constitutional rights one). It'd be interesting to rerun this with the prompt being "Is this a true statement of fact, a false statement of fact, or an opinion?"

Pew's website helpfully has a quiz where you can test yourself...with the same questions you just read a report on.

Older readers have worse memories.

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Can I request that external URLs not be embedded in FPP titles?
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Younger readers don't remember to preview.

Technically I'd forgotten to put a post title on at all, and so the MM-HMMM appeared to be the title, but was smaller and lower and differently blue.

What happens if you put a link in the post title?

Are there cross-country comparisons? My first reaction was that it's just aging, but this

the real correlation with poor performance is exposure to television news, which has fallen off among young people but remains very high among older people. This shouldn't be surprising, if we consider the evolution of American media over the past 60 years.

7.2: I assume that you fucked up and forgot to link. Then I mouseover, see an external URL and have a UX hissy fit. ALL I WANT IS PEACE OF MIND HEEBIE IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?

(That was a joke. Not actually yelling. Bedtime now.)

My first thought was "Crash Test Dummies thread".

8: I bet it's more specific than that.

I'm not going to defend the oldsters on this, but if people who are 18-29 voted as diligently as people 50-70, the world would look pretty different. Yes, I know that suppression etc accounts for some of that non-voting but, ex recto, I think other factors are way more important.

Just to respond to the post title.

Young people are the worst, except for old people.

13: Since old people believe their opinions are facts, they have much stronger views on political issues and are more motivated to vote.

Wasn't there another recent study finding old people easier to provoke into emotional decisionmaking (like purchases)? I can't find the link now.

if people who are 18-29 voted as diligently as people 50-70, the world would look pretty different. Yes, I know that suppression etc accounts for some of that non-voting but, ex recto, I think other factors are way more important.

The thing that I'm always sympathetic to, though, is that it's extremely hard to learn recent history if you didn't live through it. So even if you're paying attention at age 20, it's extraordinarily complex and the backstory is a total mess. It just straight up takes years of trying before it starts to make sense, and voting before that means that you have someone whose advice you take. Thus presidential elections are easy to figure out if you have opinions on issues, but smaller elections are harder to care about.

Of course, it should have become much easier for any teenager to figure out who's bad in the last year.

But the obstacles to voting!!

8. So exposure to the internet is better than exposure to TV news? I suppose if you read a wide variety of content and stay away from Twittare and Facebork that might possibly be the case, but is that what most people do?

18. Since school US history courses cover things in chronological order, they usually run out of time around when they get to the Vietnam War, if that.

My teacher skipped WW2 so he could cover Vietnam and Watergate.

Teenagers are definitely not getting their information from Facebook and Twitter. Those are old-people platforms.

How do you get information from Snapchat?

I leaned what a bird with a human penis looks like from Tumblr.

I mean, it was linked from here, but the link went to Tumblr.

21: Instagram? Am I one of the cool kids finally?

21: Instagram? Am I one of the cool kids finally?

25,26: Sorry. I'm very excited.

Because of all the swimsuit models?

Yeah, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat seem to be the platforms of choice for the youngs. Not to say that they're necessarily any better as sources of information than Facebook and Twitter, but then again that's a low bar.

Huh, I'm surprised. I assumed Insta/Snapchat would have been superseded by something I don't even know by name.

I mean, maybe it has been. I'm not super in touch with teen culture either.

I thought the kids were learning their politics on Youtube,

I guess I'm about to have a young people in the house. He now wears the same size shoe as me and is about to go to his first dance.

33: Congratulations, Moby!

In class today to make a point about the dissociation of reward and pleasure systems I asked my college students what social media they used and I got Twitter back.

34: I'm just old. Not sure what the accomplishment is.

What is the point about the dissociation of reward and pleasure systems? You used to have to work hard for a rewarding meal and now there's a Wendy's down the block?

13: if people 18-29 acted like people 50-70 at the polls, there would never be any election judges ever. I never had a single problem with any voter under 40, but something about voting seems to turn them into monsters like in "Clash of the Titans".

Them being oldsters.

I was explaining that there is a dissociation between something being rewarding and motivating and something being pleasurable, and dopamine mediates the first experience and endogenous opioids mediate the second. And so I asked if anyone had ever had the experience of checking social media even if they were absolutely not enjoying it anymore, but still found something reinforcing about clicking and seeing new information and images, an experience they immediately recognized.

I suppose if you read a wide variety of content and stay away from Twittare and Facebork

I know unfogged is one of the leading places for people to stay twitter is all stupid, but a lot depends on how you use it. I get more information on twitter that I can use to evaluate the news I get from twitter than I ever got from tv news about tv news. Or even from the newspaper about the newspaper. I've shut off the main sources of shit links by skipping retweets and reply thread rabbit holes.

Before I quit Facebook I got a whole bunch of shit links from people sharing dubious sources and it got tiring to have to keep marking some source as "don't show me this again."

I applied a similar approach to cable news but this led to just not watching it. I'd probably still watch Maddow, I guess.

I did feel more informed when I read blogs, but then all those bloggers went to twitter.

Cable news is where you get stories where they talk to a "small town mayor" and imply that he's just some common guy and then you have to go to the internet to discover that he's the mayor of an affluent suburb of a major municipality and that he's on the short list of people likely to become the next member of the House of Representatives for his district after the long time incumbent retires.

42: Yeah, as much as I've been resisting Twitter I find I'm spending more and more time reading it just because that's where a lot of the people writing stuff I want to read are these days. I probably will give in and sign up for it sometime soon.

I find Facebook interesting as a way of tracking which of my supposed friends* is sharing misinformation. Brexit has been very revealing that way. I know at least one person of whom I am absolutely 100% certain they are deliberately sharing false information with malice aforethought.

Also people like AWB and some others (who are also here) who post insightful things.

* people I know through activities like music, or work. Not real life actual friends.

I like FB in part because if you friend/follow journalists that you like, they'll let you know when they write interesting things, and because the crossover group from here shares much more interesting things than I get from people I know IRL. (Or often the same things, just a week to a year sooner.) My feed is mostly not poisoned by Republicans and people who I loathe.

I dislike it for a million reasons, but the above are the good points. Plus I like photos of kids and kitties.

40: Been there.

Young people at Starbucks only screw up my breakfast when I order oatmeal, I think because they aren't familiar with foods old people eat so they can have a nice crap.

True. I have no intuitive sense of the value of manure.

You'll learn.

I don't think I'll survive the fall of the cities, tbh.

21. Teenagers are definitely not getting their information from Facebook and Twitter. Those are old-people platforms.

Exactly, and "millennials" aren't going there either. That's how they avoid the most toxic posts.

The rule of thumb is, if your mom is on it, you aren't. They have FB accounts but don't use them that much. At least that's what I'm told by millennials I know (anecdote != data, of course). Snapchat and Instagram are alleged to be popular. Of course they might be lying, as I am Not One of Them.

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Is it just me, or does Shinzo Abe look like a lot like a sleepy koala?
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My mom's only news source is the daily newsletter from the assisted living place.

When Boomers were the people with a parent to care for as well as a child to raise, it was all over the news like it was a national issue of great importance. Now that the Boomers are doing neither, it's just a personal problem.

I did a comparison using Google Images and I think it's just you. Sleepy koalas are adorable!

56: Sorry, again! That comment was supposed to start "53:"

Shinzo is too adorable. He's got the sleepy eyes thing going.

It's certainly possible for young people's social media to fool young people into believing misinformation. The Brazilian fascists promising to replace democracy with a military dictatorship are being voted in by lots of young people who are overwhelmed by lies on Whatsapp.

New question: What is going on with the Avenatti saga? Apparently that Kavanaugh statement from the third woman, which made us say "This sounds implausible, but she's a government employee and it's a sworn statement, so it shouldn't be dismissed", was in fact full of lies and he was pretending two different women were the same woman?

Also, had anyone heard of Avenatti before he rocketed to fame as Stormy Daniels's lawyer? Now people are saying "Uhhh if anyone is surprised in 2018 that Avenatti is a weird liar, apparently they haven't been paying attention." Paying attention to what? The California State Bar Association?

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On FB, an acquaintance's house was broken into and invaded, and the only thing taken was what they probably thought was a gun, but was actually a bassoon. They're very upset.

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The main thing anyone appreciated about Avenatti was he seemed to be as good at gaming the media as Trump's people, getting perpetual drip-drip coverage, getting in their OODA loop. It's starting to seem like he falls flat in most other competency areas, including being an actual lawyer.

54: My mother likes to have the TV on, but is gradually losing the ability to use the remote. I suspect this may be why many elders leave Fox News on for hours and hours. Thankfully, my mom sitkcs with MSNBC, so her political views match Rachel Maddow's.

Or they thought it was a bassoon, which are really expensive. Sorry for your friend.

Not to blame the victim, but are you sure it wasn't an inside job done by a non Bassoonist.

64/65: It's possible. It definitely seemed targeted.

Ask if they practice often and how far away the nearest neighbor is.

64b is probably right. I just googled and the cheap ones are $2,500.

My new Canadian-crime job is Bassoon Fence.

Canadian crime-job?

OR...
Is your friend the first bassoonist? What do you know about the second bassoonist? Ever seen them lurking around the auditorium wings while the first bassoonist practices, vowing to take the first chair at all costs?

Bassoon fence and Bassoonist finger-breaker.

I have a rush project going, so naturally I'm having trouble looking away. Rumors as of now: they got Florida Man with DNA because he licked the stamps; he's a convicted felon and a registered voter in Florida. Waiting to hear if he voted in 2016.

sorry, wrong thread!

45,46: There are a bunch of people I miss seeing on Facebook, like AWB, but my overall Facebook experience was getting worse and worse. Like, there were people who no matter how much I wanted to see all of their posts, it just wouldn't show me that. Oddly, most of the misinformation I saw was on the leftish side, which in some way made it more of a time sink for me to investigate whether it was real and possibly worth sharing.

For following people not on my friends list, like journalists, I was already on twitter for that when Facebook added the feature so I never started.

Plus I like photos of kids and kitties.

Oh, I do too. I see myself as a "dog person," not a "cat person," but I honestly think FB has made me more appreciative of cats and their people.

I don't like the abused puppy stuff, though. A few of my aunts and cousins are very energetic in their promotion of harrowing (though ultimately heroic) tales of horrifically abused little dogs who pluckily, and against all odds, manage to pull through, and who then find their "forever homes" in a happily-ever-after... Makes me want to block those aunts and those cousins, but I cannot/dare not, because, you know, family.

My 17-year old son tells me that FB is for "seniors."

I've mostly stopped reading Facebook although I still post there since my older relatives see things that way. But it's desperately trying to get me to read more often, I've started getting notifications like "X added a movie to his timeline" where X is someone I haven't interacted with in 8 years. No matter how hard I try to turn off these notifications they still show up.

They come back after updates, I think.

There's a bunch of old, slow, white people in the airport and I'm having trouble not yelling at them for being slow while looking like a Trump voter. Maybe it's just too early or maybe it's wrong to keep your bins the long way on the conveyor and block out everyone else.

They aren't like elderly old, just ten years older than me old.

I've wanted to yell at slow old people that are ten years younger than me.

Ah, but you were so much older ten years ago. You're younger than that now.

Chances are, the old, slow, white people of Missouri could use some yelling at. Especially as my parents are out of town.