Every year, the number of highly educated people worldwide is increasing, while the number of illiterate people is decreasing to a statistical error. At the same time, in the era of social networks and the flood of information new phenomenon appears – an uninformed population. Instead of having the other way round. This is where we – the young – are especially affected. We who mostly do not read newspapers and for whom being informed is reduced to likes on social networks.
We have come to the point where young people today move in the same circles of their like-minded friends. And they only talk about things that interest them. And they never discover what else they might be interested in. Things that should interest them.
For centuries, newspapers have fulfilled their service, to inform people. They had their own sections – politics, society, economy, world, culture, sports. They served their purpose, every morning after reading them you know what you will be talking about with people who have different interests than you. But also to be informed about what is happening in the world, culture, sports.
Now, that is what Instagram and TikTok are here for.
Where we only follow people we choose ourselves. And those who don’t know how to share information with us, which was once the main role of big newsrooms.
This is how a new phenomenon is created, which we witnessed best during the Corona virus pandemic.We put our trust in fake doctors, fake posts and unverified information.
In the end, we get new generations who have a broader education, who graduate in increasing numbers from universities, but do not have basic information about the world around them. This is best proven by the fact that young people keep showing less and less interest in politics, society, even though it is the world that awaits them.
The school cannot compensate for this. In it, you learn how to think, and theoretically, you learn everything. But what will happen to us young people when we have to put theory into practice?
How are we going to elect politicians, who make decisions for us, if we don’t even know them? How are we going to have our views on basic human rights, the role of the state, if we are not informed?
How will someone who graduates from the Faculty of Economics today and gathers all the theoretical knowledge and applies it, if during his studies he did not read how the field of his interest is changing, what is happening with bitcoins, the stock market, companies that were once strong and are failing today?
Do young people really think that environmental protection does not concern them, when it is expected that they will have to live in that world in the future?
When will we understand that the wave of nationalism will bring us new wars, which we will have to fight in someone’s name? Will the promotion of material values eventually make us unhappy, when we realize that expensive shoes do not bring happiness? How are we going to create a critical opinion if we don’t know anything about the world around us?
And it can not only be found at schools, but even less on TikTok or Instagram. What will the new world look like in which, in the end, there will be no one to announce whether a poisonous cloud, a bomb, a virus, fascism or the deprivation of women’s rights is coming, if we are informed about it, again, by false prophets who we give likes to on social networks?
All this is nowhere better represented than in the song written on “New England Holocaust Memorial”. It reads:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a socialst.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade union.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me –
and there was no one left to speak for me.
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