The Decline of Truth and the Rise of ... Whatever
I love the benefits of the Digital Revolution. No, really. I do. How did I exist before I could binge TV series, design my own radio station, track my steps, gauge my sleep, and ask AI vital questions like “What is Hantavirus, and can we get it in Montgomery?” Really, I don’t know how I survived in the 20th century. Last week in Atlanta I even thought about taking a driverless cab – a Waymo – before chickening out.
I felt the need to write that rosy first paragraph just to prove I’m not a caveman. Because what is about to follow is the outpouring of a troubled mind that fears things may have gone too far, and the future might be a touch apocalyptic. The thing that is especially on my mind is what the Internet and, especially, social media, has done to the concept of Truth – with a capital T. Like, does anyone know what Truth is anymore, and where can I find it?
Because I’m a Christian I feel like I have a special relationship with the Truth. Jesus said he was “The Truth”. He promised that the Holy Spirit would “lead us into all Truth”. God is pretty disapproving of lies - heck, it even made his ‘Top 10 Things Not To Do’ issued to Moses on Mt Sinai. So, I take it personally when I hear brazen falsehoods. They make me angry. It feels like a kind of blasphemy.
More than that, though, I feel the pain and fear of a culture which, thanks to the Digital Revolution, no longer has any agreed way of discovering the Truth. What does it matter if we have freedom of speech is there’s no way of telling what is true and what is false? Does communication even matter anymore?
Perhaps the area of our national life where the attack on Truth is most worryingly harmful is advice on healthcare. This week Pew Research released some research that shows that 40% of American adults now get their health and wellness information from social media influencers and podcasts. This number rises to 50% for those under the age of 50.
As if this were not troubling enough, Pew dived more deeply into the identities of the social media personalities who are dispensing this medical advice. They identified 6,828 people with at least 100,000 followers on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram who regularly post about health and wellness and analyzed their social media profiles. Of this number, only 41% mentioned that they were a health care professional in their profile, and only 17% described themselves as conventional medical professionals like doctors, dentists and nurses. 31% of health influencers described themselves as ‘coaches’, 28% as ‘entrepreneurs’, and 13% as people whose life experiences qualified them to give health advice. A further 16% did not mention anything about their background or health expertise in their bios.
Let that sink in. Just 17% of big-time health and wellness advisers on social media are conventional medical professionals.
What can we do about this? Well, at the very last it should drive us to speak the truth (in love) on our social media pages. Don’t post or repost things unless you know they are facts – do some unbiased research, trust accredited experts and not amateurs. Be part of the solution to falsehood, not part of the problem.