For most of us, sharing a post or video with our friends is a daily occurrence. Whether it is a funny video or an update on a situation you are following, scrolling on social media has become a main source of entertainment for young people.
While this allows us to connect with our peers and share information, it has also burdened us with the responsibility of making sure what we are sharing is true. We are living in an age of citizen journalists and crowd-sourced reporters — but how much truth is actually being reported? And more importantly, how much fake news are we inadvertently sharing?
The 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News Report found that 34 per cent of adults in their sample of about 2000 Americans used social media as their main source of news. Around 40 per cent of young people, aged 18–29, reported using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok as their main sources of news.
While it is encouraging to see people take an interest in local and international events, increased social media use as a news source has made it easier for false information to spread far and wide.
In my opinion, navigating social media to form your own opinion is getting harder by the day, as false information and malicious intent buffet us in every direction. Therefore, I believe that making sure you only take in information from trusted sources, and pausing before sharing it with your friends, is the only way to make sure you won’t be led astray.
What is ‘fake news’?
We have all heard the term ‘fake news’ being thrown around, either to discredit an unreliable source, or as a defensive tactic to justify one’s own opinion — correct or not. With the uncertainty of information running rampant, it’s important that we frame this issue in the proper context.
Misinformation is the imparting of information that is false or incomplete, but without the intention of misleading someone. Disinformation, on the other hand, is the spreading of information that is false and has been purposefully created in order to cause harm. While one is intentional and the other is not, they both result in the viewer receiving incorrect information.
A May study in the Journal of Public Economics found that 50 per cent of people believed false information when presented to them on social media.
The growing spread of fake news has led to omnipresent uncertainty within the general public when it comes to trusting new information, whatever the source.
According to a 2025 Pew Research Center report, only 56 per cent of the adults in the US reported trusting the information they get from national news organizations, which is down 11 per cent since March. While this means people may be wary when consuming fake news, it also means they are reluctant to trust reliable sources as well. So what does this mean for the average young person?
Young people and the news
In my own experience, people aged 18–22 consume a huge amount of content from social media every day, and are by no means immune to falling victim to both misinformation and disinformation.
Having just gone through a Federal Election in Canada this year, we saw how political parties and their prime ministerial candidates utilized social media to boost their platforms. I also saw a number of independent creators sharing their own opinions and versions of the facts to sway people into voting one way or another. These posts were shared again and again. But I believe that they were often missing crucial information and deliberately spread lies in order to sway those who are not well-informed enough.
One instance of this that I remember distinctly is when a friend showed me a TikTok from a creator advising against voting for now Prime Minister Mark Carney. The creator made the argument that since Carney was Governor of the Bank of England when the UK government made the decision to leave the European Union –– a very costly economic mistake for the UK –– he should not be trusted with Canada’s economy.
While the fact that Carney was Governor at the time was correct, what the creator neglected to mention was that Carney publicly advised against Brexit, and is credited by many as having helped the country avoid a dire economic situation by guiding it through the transition cleverly.
Making a decision when it comes to voting in an election has become not just a choice between candidates, but an all-out battle to see through all of the false information being targeted at you.
In addition to election-based interference, another area that has been heavily corrupted by creators spreading false information is the health industry. While we have seen all kinds of health-based fads and theories, I feel as though the amount of misinformation that is being perpetuated on the internet borders on a serious crisis.
The “HealthTok” trends that make the rounds of TikTok and Instagram, such as the “carnivore diet” and “dry scooping” pre-workout powder, may have some health benefits, but when creators push these lifestyle changes, they neglect to include the serious, detrimental side effects that can arise from following their instructions.
Whether this can be blamed on the short time limit for videos and character limit for text, or on the creators themselves, it results in the consumers trusting unverified information and practicing unsafe habits.
Why are so many people getting their news from social media?
The 2025 Reuters report found that only 14 per cent of Canadians pay for their news source. In a time of recession and economic uncertainty, few people are willing to spend their money on a traditional, reliable news source, preferring to consume news from free sources and take their chances with sources that may not be presenting information in a fact-based, well-founded manner.
Many major news organizations only allow free access to a certain number of articles before a payment must be made. For organizations like the Washington Post, whose motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” the use of a paywall seems to be a departure from their mission statement, as crucial information for voters is limited to those who can afford the monthly subscription.
What can be done about this?
The key to trusting the information in front of you is knowing who it is coming from. While some of the biggest names in news have put limits and paywalls up on their articles, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, many more have made the tradeoff with advertising in order to keep their information available to all — such as the BBC, CBC, and The Guardian. You can even check out your school newspaper, as many, such as The Varsity, have a trusted process in place to help mitigate the spread of false information.
In my opinion, the divide between “accessible” and “reliable” is widening by the day, when they should be indistinguishable. Only by taking this issue seriously, and protecting ourselves and those around us from consuming false information, can we form our own opinions and build a solid foundation on which to have real, educated debate.
Emma Appathurai is a fourth-year human biology and English double major. She is also the Opinion Section’s What’s New in News Columnist.
