As a democracy, we need to educate our younger generations so they follow a better path in the future. With age, young citizens gain responsibilities, some of which include voting for several important elections. In a survey where 17 eighth-grade students were surveyed, 100% claimed they had seen fake news on social media. To narrow it down even more, out of the 17 eight grade students surveyed, 100% of them claimed they had seen fake news about a presidential candidate on social media. (Wolff) This is outrageous. The fact that misinformation about candidates can be spread and even believed. This affects the results of elections and therefore it harms our democracy. I also interviewed a 45-year-old voter. “I have seen multiple accounts of fake news on social media. It doesn’t affect my opinion because I know better than to believe it, but I can totally see how it can deceive others.” (Andrew Wolff) Many people who are less educated than this individual (especially our younger generation) can be easily deceived to believe fake news, and it will be a forever-developing issue if we don’t be more careful. 

               To continue with this theme of fake news, especially in the Covid-19 pandemic, we choose to believe a lot more than we should. We are all often mislead by misinformation and fake news about this pandemic and topics stemming from it. For me personally, news on social media had a huge impact on my life and changed my opinion on a ton of topics. This also had a huge impact on our elections. A civic educator and demographics expert claims that fake news spread about the election greatly impacted some people’s decision to vote.  “Once again in 2020, disinformation about the election -- including the voting process -- has been spread widely and endangers our democracy. U.S. intelligence officials have issued warnings about ongoing tactics to hack Americans, manipulate the media and sow confusion about the campaign and election.” (Heffner) As a democracy, we thrive on people having their own, falsely uninfluenced opinions. If people who were formerly going to vote to decide not to, the election is heavily affected. This action harms our democracy and it needs to stop. We need to stop believing everything we see on social media.

           There are many different ways people who publish misinformation and fake news can swerve your opinion. It can also create false allegations and accusations. Hackers create “bot” accounts to spread misinformation and false allegations about presidential candidates. I know, I know, you must be thinking, does this really happen? Can hackers really exploit social media for bad uses to this extent? Unfortunately, yes. Reports published by the Department of Justice discovered Russian Military intelligence actively exploiting social media to persuade people to vote against Hillary Clinton. (Fake News on Social Media) Who knows, maybe if this news hadn’t been spread Clinton could have won! This is simply not okay, and as a society and members of an intact democracy, this needs to stop. 

              Opposing sides will say there are pros to spreading news on social media. Studies have shown that by campaigning on social media, you can have more audience engagement and more success with the campaign. (Keller) But using social media as a primary source can also backfire against the candidate. While spreading their campaign, people find loopholes and exploit that hole until fake news comes of it. People will find any way to try and ruin the candidate they hate if they hate them enough. Candidates also expect campaigning to directly influence the audience, but some people just ignore it entirely. 

          Overall, as the next generation, we have to be more careful. This goes out to the current eligible voters too, don’t think I’m not talking about you! We are all vulnerable and sometimes we don’t think about what’s actually true and what is completely false. So next time you are scrolling through your social media feed and you see a headline about a candidate or anyone for that matter, make sure you are careful and research before you believe it.