As the majority of our recent days are spent cycling our social media: Instagram, Twiter, Tik Tok, Facebook, etc; we are sure to have stumbled upon the conversation of COVID-19. It seems as though all anyone will talk about is the global pandemic that has consumed our lives. It is hard not to talk about it when we are stuck in our houses all day because of it. Scrolling through these social media outlets, words are written of fear and speculation about the many unknowns that lay ahead. We turn to our devices in times of fear to find comfort in the words of others. When the whole world is facing the same issue, there seems to be a lot to talk about. But what if the information that we turn to on social media isn’t true?

Forbes magazine recently published an article titled “How Social Media Is Making The Spread Of Coronavirus Worse”, and it tackles this exact issue. The reading of misinformation only heightens fear and anxiety. This article discusses a survey conducted by the Reboot Foundation with the purpose of tracking the publics’ knowledge of the coronavirus. The study found that almost a third of the American public interviewed in the survey believed in COVID-19 myths. For example, the study showed that 12 percent of the people in the survey believed that the virus was created by people, rather than originally transmitted from an animal. It is scary to think about how social media can easily spread false information, yet it can come off as reliable.

On apps such as Twiter or Instagram, it is so easy to see a post and reshare it through your feed, therefore multiplying information, and sometimes misinformation, by the minute. Conspiracies and questions that are posted by users can easily turn into statements of facts, as they spread through the streams of media. The Reboot research also found that just over the past few weeks, there have been more than 1,000 tweets per minute about the coronavirus, many of which were not factual. As society is looking for anything right now to flatten the curve of the virus, the last thing we need is inaccurate information being spread, causing fear and incorrect protocol. We are all globally fighting this battle together, and at this point, all we really have are the words of others to stay connected. Whether it be confirming the source of the post or trying to find that same piece of information on another site, we can be in control of the legitimacy of the information we read. As a digitality connected society, we should be mindful of the words we read and spread through social media.