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Abstract: The rise and wide spread of misinformation has had severe impact on the choices people make on a day-to-day basis. The research focused on narrowing down this impact to generations Y and Z. The study hence conducts research on how Internet misinformation may have affected members of these generations which includes finding out if they intentionally or unintentionally take part in spreading misinformation. The research uses quantitative analysis to arrive at the results. The researchers found that although a majority claimed to have never shared misinformation either intentionally or unintentionally, a majority of them claimed to have already made decisions as a result of misinformation from the internet. This shows that they may have been victims of being misled and thus the originator of the misinformation may have achieved the set objective of misleading the target audience. Furthermore, some personal characteristics could be identified for those social media users who share misinformation intentionally therefore might harm other social media users.
Keywords: Internet, Millennials, Misinformation
1Introduction
1.1Background of the study
The millennials or rather generation Y is the first generation and then generation Z which are heavily influenced by the internet [1]. This is because both grew up in an era of rapid technological advancements. These advancements involved the introduction of high-speed internet devices which are easily accessible for purchase and ownership.
The technological advancements also include the rise of the use of social networking platforms such as facebook, whatsapp, instagram and twitter. Most of the early adopters of this kind of platforms at the point and time of their creation were the millennials whom, at the time, were within the adolescent period of their life. The social networking platforms which were created to increase efficiency in communication also used additional features such as photo and video sharing tools which were advertised using young people to highly target the millennials. Therefore, these two generations might have fallen prey to misinformation caused by the high-speed growth of internet usage.
The internet made communication and the spread of information easy and effective. It also decentralized the source of information and with that came the rise of misinformation [2]. This endangers the society especially when people cannot verify between being factual and misinformed [3].
There are numerous...