As the rise of technology usage becomes greater and greater over the years, consumers continue to increase. With that being said, due to social media’s monetized aspects, there is a lot of motive created for the misinformation being spread through social media platforms. 

With advancements in technology, the monetization of social media has not only become a way to make a living but also a trend among most generations of Z. Therefore many different influencers will choose to promote certain things based on the sole fact of getting a payday. Meaning they will promote anything whether that outcome is positive or negative. 

The issue being that social media consumers will listen to whatever information they see, as long as it’s being said by their favorite influencers. Since most consumers are uneducated or unaware about the false information being spread. Mrs. Verderosa, a media teacher at Spring Valley High School, claimed the main issue of the young generation consumers is, “I think the biggest thing is being aware of it, i don’t think most teenagers really understand how these apps work. We talked about it a little bit in Journalism one, about how if you are not paying for something, if you’re not the consumer you’ve become the product. It is really what they say in journalism. We are not paying for social media so we are not the consumer, the consumer and the advertiser are paying a lot of money so that our eyeballs are on their stuff. Most people don’t realize how that works so they just think oh this is fun without realizing they are being targeted for something. So I think just explaining that process and how their phones work is very empowering, because then you can decide how you wanna use it and how it impacts your choices.”

There are actively multiple influencers who are getting exposed for the spread of false information. For example a recent influencer example of spreading false information is Liver King. An influencer who has built his fanbase of pure lies. Emanuel a Spring Valley senior stated his opinion on the reason consumer fall for the false information presented saying, “I believe that social media consumers fall for false information because false information is often more interesting.” He even admitted that he has fallen for false information claiming, “Yes, often fake news is promoted by people in the media and it turns out to be false.”

The spread of fake news is rising with the usage of social media, and we must stay aware to refrain from being overtaken by it.

For more information on this, read about the newest influencer exposed :https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XmESg3WVcW0p9S7pnRde–EXuwY3BCglj1Ga-zzSSVA/edit