I was scrolling through Reddit and saw a post about the now-viral skit parodying Erika Kirk. This post was a reaction to a comment on X about a news headline, to which Kirk allegedly reacted badly. According to online hearsay, Kirk demanded that X owner, Elon Musk, remove the offensive video. But America’s Free Speech Warrior, keen to defend comedy, rejected the request.
Gossiping About Nonsense
I was, however, more intrigued by the comments below the post. Redditers were having a rabid debate, commenting on a post, about a post, about a headline. This Russian-doll-style news gathering is all too common online. And the problem? The whole story was a fabrication. The skit was real, but Kirk and Musk’s heated exchange was fake. Reddit users were debating a completely fictitious exchange.
Today, the online space has overtaken traditional media for news consumption. Online platforms have replaced TV as the most popular source of news. While young people increasingly consume news on social media, reflecting 44 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds, this tendency is not just relegated to the youth. The stereotype of the misinformed boomer eagerly dependent on AI-generated news is somewhat legitimate. Older generations are increasingly reliant on the online realm for both factual and false news. Young people, however, remain the predominant target audience for online news consumption. And they are not immune to the information pollution. I have lost count of how many times I have seen someone similar to my age fall for AI slop.
The Problem With Democratised News
What is wrong with this dynamic? Social media is a novel and accessible mode of news consumption, having democratised the consumption and production of news. In turn, the citizenry, including you and me, can publicly comment without hindrance and without the need to be experts in the field of journalism. Most journalists have degrees; some have a master’s. Specialised qualifications, such as the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) diploma, have a whopping 74 per cent of their graduates working within the industry. Often, columnists are privately educated. It is highly understandable why Gen-Z is drawn towards news sources that are not controlled by educational exclusivity or social privilege.
However, traditional media arguably remains more accurate. In part, due to this strict gatekeeping. Most journalists must comply with ethical codes. Their work must undergo rounds of editing, collaboration, and fact-checking before publication. Your average student who posts AI-generated content to dropship has none of these concerns. I’m stupefied by the extent to which my feed is awash with artificiality. Here, skits are received as if they were documentaries. AI-generated influencers are revered for their authenticity, unknown to the audience that the ‘person’ on their screens is not real. I kid you not, I have seen celebrities repost a clearly AI-generated glamorous grandma.
Meanwhile, AI-generated ‘Eid’ easter eggs are undoubtedly created to whip up islamophobia. This is not a problem relegated to our elders. The young rarely read beyond a headline before casting judgment. It is so easy to have a superiority complex regarding misinformation. But most cannot spot it. Maybe that’s why seven in 10 adults think they can detect misinformation. But the reality is that only two in 10 can identify an accurate post on social media.
The Analogue Tend
We exist in a peculiar paradigm. Most young people believe they can correctly identify misinformation, while simultaneously consuming fiction as news. This aligns with my experience. Online, I see so many young people, myself included, adamant that they can identify AI-generated content, skits, and misinformation. All the while consuming that very content.
The rise of the analogue trend provides some hope. The year 2026 has been hailed as the year of the analogue. This movement demands that young people ditch the horrors of modern technology in favour of analogue forms of recreation. Returning, at least in part, to an analogue-based approach to news would reverse this crisis of harmful consumption.
When asked for their opinion, journalists responded that only four in 10 Americans read beyond the headline, and just 10 per cent agreed with the statement that readers engaged ‘a lot’ with the details of a story. Reading a physical newspaper, however, compels you to read beyond the headline. There is no quick way to scroll past the details.
Returning to analogue for our news may seem a bit extreme, but the point is that we need to loosen our dependence on social media. It can still serve as a springboard for reading and researching sources. However, Gen Z radically underestimate how much misinformation they are exposed to. It is easy to passively accept what is presented as news. But it’s also crucial to question and investigate our feeds. What is the source? What are the political biases? Is there a citation? Is the citation a legitimate source? All these questions matter when determining the validity of a piece of information.
Your Friends and Enemies
Social media posters and influencers are not your friends, even though they use Gen-Z slang and seem like perfectly reliable people. At the end of the day, they are profit-making machines that often forgo truth for the sake of clicks, shares and likes.
Traditional forms of media are likewise not immune to these problems. Traditional media has been accused of using AI, being politically biased and concentrating on profit margins over empathic accuracy. Recently, a New York Times book reviewer was fired for using AI. The problem is that polluting the online space with fictitious or plagiarised content may no longer be a career-ending blunder. In the context of a 24-hour news cycle and aggregated news’ portability, there is always more news to generate and potentially invent.
Given the scale of our reliance on social media and habituation to fake news and misinformation, analogue could prove to be an effective middle ground. In the meantime, I’m going to buy some supplements from an AI-generated monk. He would not have 2.6 million followers for nothing, right?
DISCLAIMER: The articles on our website are not endorsed by, or the opinions of Shout Out UK (SOUK), but exclusively the views of the author.
Adaeze Onwuelo
HSPS student and columnist passionate about the intersection between popular culture and political sociology!
