Recently, Pinoy Big Brother, the Filipino adaptation of the famous Big Brother reality show, trends in social media due to its controversial episode in which some of the housemates answered history and general information questions wrong. Netizens find the episode funny. The questions are supposedly easy and general information, something that even Filipino grade school students can answer. But these teenagers got them wrong. 

Perhaps it was just a marketing ploy. It can be a stint to boost engagements and social media buzz. But if this is not scripted, this poses a problem. 

It's not even a Filipino issue. I also posted a video of two podcasters arguing about gravity. Yes, the force that pulls everything to the ground. The lady in the video is contemplating what if "gravity is not invented?" As if everything floats in the air before Isaac Newton came up with the gravitational theory in 1665. It's silly, but again, I take it with a grain of salt. Not everything that is posted on the internet should be taken seriously.

The bigger issue

More than the entertainment value these kinds of videos give us, it also mirrors something bigger. We are facing not just an educational crisis, but also an information crisis due to various reasons, and it shows. 

The quality of information we receive from the internet is shaping the way we think and act. Before social media, we are heavily reliant on printed books and newspapers. We view these sources as king and unquestionable. But when social media came we questioned the intentions and veracity of the books we were reading. We took the saying "history is written by victors" by heart. We deduced that we can no longer rely on the information written in books and printed materials for they can be biased against the truth. 

So we resort to short-form content - blogs, vlogs, reels, and tweets and consider them gospel truth. Our ever-shortening attention span keeps us away from reading long-form content so we rely on short-form content for information. When an influencer shares his piece on the topic, we no longer corroborate them with other sources. When a reel shows an interesting topic, we do not dare double-check. 

It's ironic that in a generation where information is readily accessible, we choose to be misinformed. 

Living in an echo chamber

Our thought pattern is being shaped by our social media algorithm. Whatever we frequently read and browse online will try to shape our thinking and our choices. The algorithm is not just suggestive, it is also demanding. So our versions of truth may be different from others even if we live in the same physical environment. This is because our environments are different. And most likely, we live in our own echo chamber, where we hear things we want to hear, read things we want to read, and accept truths we believe as true.

Going back to the issue of the teenagers. There are many factors behind their failure to answer the trivia questions. But I can't help but notice the opposing views caused by that controversy. Whose fault is it? Is it the children's fault for not taking their lessons well, or the educational system's failure to deliver what is due to these children? This topic could lead to an endless debate, same with other polarizing issues in our society. Evidently, our social media friends are now fighting over who is to blame. But as long as we deal with our tendencies to patronize our own echo chambers, we will stick to what we believe is right at the expense of not knowing the other side of the story.

Our echo chambers cause us to antagonize those who don't share our views, to the point that we lose our rational thinking over an issue and cancel each other instead. But if we think things through, we'll realize that we all have a common enemy - that is to reduce, if not totally eradicate misinformation to progress as one wisely informed citizenry.