The Benefits and Risks of Consuming Content Online by Adam Lester E. Patajo

As people’s demands and lifestyle change, the demand for advancing the type of technology we use is high. Rapid change in technology has hugely impacted our lives. Almost everything we use has been innovated to better standards. The advancement of technology has simplified yet improved the way we do things, thus saves our time. It paved the way for us to gravitate to less laborious activities because things are becoming more and more instant. Our personal lives are highly dependent on the technology that others have developed. Technology, indeed, has advanced and it has changed the way we live, the way we learn and most especially the way we communicate. With technology, information across international borders was made accessible hence, barriers were removed.

Absorbing content online can be advantageous as far as critical thinking is at play. In a smartphone-dependent era, people tend to move towards anything instant. As a result, big news companies use it as an advantage to market their news to online readers. Marketers make web contents “skimmable” and easy to digest content enough for a reader to draw his or her attention to it. Easily digestible pieces of information or content made by these marketers to attract readers online is in a way a benefit. Beneficial in that contents that can be found in newspapers or television are already simplified online. Another thing with absorbing content through online is being up to date. To be updated with everything that is happening around the world, data available on the internet is necessary. Speed is evidently more advantageous in this modern world. With speed, information from across borders will be made available in just blink of an eye. However, speed comes with repetition thus, leading to distortion of information. Distorted information, then poses a risk.

Risks of consuming content online include assimilation of distorted information that is fake news. Fake news is rampant and is proliferating on social media platforms. A good amount of critical thinking then is needed. Furthermore, absorbing content online, in a way, lets you develop a one-sided kind of argumentation. We have biases of our own and if we tend to only hear out things we want to hear and believe things we only want to believe in, we become trapped in an echo-chamber. We are then manifesting closed-mindedness susceptible to fake news. To be able to develop critical thinking, one must get out of that chamber in order to find a diverse array of opinions and argue comprehensively.