Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since May 03, 2022)
Date Submitted: Feb 23, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Science, Social Media and Alternative Facts: It Might Take A While
ABSTRACT
Social media is shaping the way we think and interact with one another like no other time in history. Spreading misinformation about science and medical practices came to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. How do we prevent the constant stream of falsehoods from entering our personal space? Legislating social media platforms against misinformation and dangerous content may be part of the answer. However, a more effective approach is to create new social and educational programs, beginning at primary school, showing how to debunk conspiracies by contrasting opinion versus evidence. We also propose the formation of a World Social Media Organization made up of world partners to oversee dangerous/harmful content, analogous to the World Health Organization to support global health. If we continue to travel down the road of complacency, historians 100 years from now may write: “the people of the early 21st century became so overwhelmed with digital information that they failed to develop the skills to sufficiently process it to the detriment of their health and society”.
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© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.