Facebook is taking over the 2016 election

With the election results upon us today it is very important that we take something away from this election.
One of the biggest issues with this election is people taking false information away from social media.
Especially millennials know that every time you log on to Facebook you see your friends and family posting from uncredited sources, just helping add to the fire.
Every time we share a story about a candidate that we have not done our own research on and triple checked the sources we are doing ourselves and our community a disservice.
Facebook especially has done a great job of getting those fake news sources right to our newsfeed.
While every person has come in contact with false news in their life, not everyone knows how to identify it.
I have come up with a few ways of knowing whether or not it is okay to share these stories on your personal social media accounts.
Make sure you triple check the sources every single time. You can do this by simply googling the topic in the story.
If you see the topic in multiple sources odds are it is credible, but that is not enough evidence for posting.
You have to fact check the topic. There are many websites people can use to ensure they are getting the right information including FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com.
These are great sites to ensure you are getting the right information from nonbiased sources. I encourage everyone to check their topic on multiple fact check sites.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning something new and gaining factual information. Another way to check your topic faster is to simply look at the address bar.
If you are looking at websites that do not have a .edu, .org or a .gov you can never be 100% sure. While there are very many credible .com websites you can get the least biased information from the websites that I have listed above.
If you read the whole article or story you can usually make good judgement based on the language and punctuation used.
Credible news sources are always going to be checking their grammar and punctuation to make sure it is perfect, where as less credible news sources wont care as much about how the appear to the public.
Fake news sources only care about getting that information across your screen and into your brain, they do not care about how good they sound most of the time.
As I said earlier, there are always going to be exceptions. It is always important to be on top of your personal research.
Knowing your facts and being well educated can not hurt anyone. You can always spread that knowledge to other people which helps the general population become a more educated whole.
It is never good to spread false information. Whether it be on social media or by word of mouth it is never good.
Dr. Lynette Long, very smart speech professor at the Volunteer State Community College Gallatin campus, always tells her students, “You always have a right to your own opinions, but you never have a right to your own facts.”
It is extremely important as a college student to be a light for those around you. Let others in on the knowledge you have and be an active listener to those you can learn from.
In my opinion the worst part about this election is the spread of false information about the candidates, and about the election itself.
No one wants to listen to each other and everyone thinks they know everything about every topic when in reality no one does real research on the topics presented to us, we just rely on the media to tell us everything we need to know and as a result we spew false information causing a horrible chain reaction resulting in a misinformed population.
While our time is over on this election I believe the American people can learn a lot about this election from how poorly it has gone.
We have to learn to listen to people’s opinions to gain information for ourselves, not just listen to reply. Ask critical questions and learn from the mistakes we have all made.
I encourage everyone to educate yourselves outside the classroom and off social media.
Help educate those around you and never stop gaining valuable information.