Report: “The Secret Digital Behaviors of Gen Z”

From Business Insider:

Over the past couple of years, researchers at Jigsaw, a Google subsidiary that focuses on online politics and polarization, have been studying how Gen Zers digest and metabolize what they see online. The researchers were hoping that their work would provide one of the first in-depth, ethnographic studies of Gen Z’s “information literacy.” But the minute they started, their most fundamental assumption about the nature of digital information came crashing down.

“Within a week of actual research, we just threw out the term information literacy,” says Yasmin Green, Jigsaw’s CEO. Gen Zers, it turns out, are “not on a linear journey to evaluate the veracity of anything.” Instead, they’re engaged in what the researchers call “information sensibility” — a “socially informed” practice that relies on “folk heuristics of credibility.” In other words, Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes. They just don’t care.

Jigsaw’s findings offer a revealing glimpse into the digital mindset of Gen Z. Where older generations are out there struggling to fact-check information and cite sources, Gen Zers don’t even bother. They just read the headlines and then speed-scroll to the comments, to see what everyone else says. They’re outsourcing the determination of truth and importance to like-minded, trusted influencers. And if an article’s too long, they just skip it. They don’t want to see stuff that might force them to think too hard, or that upsets them emotionally. If they have a goal, Jigsaw found, it’s to learn what they need to know to remain cool and conversant in their chosen social groups.

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