Lowest Common Person
Who is your audience?
INT. COFFEE SHOP - AFTERNOON
A bustling modern coffee shop. Three generations sit around a table: RYLIE, 25, MIKE, 38, and BARBS, 65. Coffee cups and half-eaten pastries litter the table.
BARBS
(pointing at her newspaper)
It says right here that artificial sweeteners are worse than sugar. Look it’s right here, so it must be true.
MIKE
No way, let me look that up... According to three different peer-reviewed studies...
(scrolling)
...it's actually more complicated than that. The effects vary based on the type of sweetener and individual metabolism.
RYLIE
(barely looking up from her phone)
My fav TikTok baddies say they're fine but also kinda bad.
BARBS
(frustrated)
Why can't anything be simple anymore? In my day, when something was printed or on the news, you could trust it!
MIKE
(excited by research)
Actually, did you know that the history of food journalism is fascinating? There's this whole...
SARAH
(quickly interrupting with a heavy eye roll)
Ugh, just kill me already. This is too much to worry about.
A WAITRESS approaches holding the coffee pot. They all stare at their sweetener packets like they're miniture time-bombs.
WAITRESS
(deadpan)
Would anyone like to know the chemical composition of our sweetener options? I have a degree in chemistry, and actually...
They all wave their hands in unified rejection.
ALL
(in unison)
NO!
Have you ever had that moment when you think you're pretty savvy about something, only to learn just enough to realize you're clueless? It's like walking into what you think is a small library, only to discover it's the entrance to an infinite maze of interconnected libraries, each one bigger than the last. And just when you've mastered the card catalog (yes, I'm dating myself here), someone hands you a smartphone and says, 'Here's all human knowledge – good luck!'
This terrifying descent into intellectual humility isn't just a personal crisis – it's reshaping how entire generations interact with information, education, and technology. You have the side that knows better and is overwhelmed by the facts, and then the other side (you know who1) where it doesn’t matter about the facts.
Learning something new happens often when working on building new user experiences. It's both hilarious and terrifying how differently each generation approaches the simple act of learning something new. But before we dive into this rabbit hole of knowledge acquisition and generational quirks, let me warn you – once you see these patterns, you can't unsee them. Like noticing a typo on a billboard, it will haunt you forever.
Knowledge Gainz
One problem with gaining knowledge is that once you know more about something, you realize how much you don’t know. And diving further into the details of that topic can become such a dilemma. It is a cycle of knowing too much but not enough. And once you cross that threshold, you can't go back to not knowing. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. You are now locked into that perspective and faced with a mountain to cross to change your perspective. This may seem obvious to you, so why should anyone care? Simply put, I believe this is where schools in the United States have mostly failed, affecting how messaging is received.
This problem trickles down to a major unintended consequence2. We see groups like the media and public—speakers, such as politicians and business leaders, prey on this concept and, in turn, have been conditioned to talk to the lowest common denominator. They always talk about the simplification of everything, which leads to the messaging getting watered down and then the message is barely even heard.
I lean towards characterizing this as a form of misinformation, but when you get to the heart of it, it’s really a dressed-down form of disinformation3. Unfortunately, this is just where we're at. If I were to make a sweeping generalization right now, a large majority of Gen-X (and obviously boomers, this should go without saying) are susceptible to missing disinformation. We just experienced this with the US presidential election. One campaign used slogans and sound bites instead of detailed policy discussions and won. But it’s not just about the false information; it’s the oversimplification and misleading pieces of it that are going to cause the most harm.
Picture this: Baby Boomers clutching a newspaper and cable news facts like precious gems, Gen-X mostly being skeptical but falling into the similar traps of Boomers, Millennials juggling multiple browser tabs of fact-checking like digital detectives, and Gen-Z speed-running through TikTok universities. Each generation's unique dance with information leads to chaos and a huge disconnect from reality (except maybe Millennials 😉). Yet this is happening a lot!
This is why messaging and disinformation are™ so problematic. Research, such as a study by the Pew Research Center, found that 64% of U.S. adults believe that fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events4. This trend towards oversimplification can dilute essential messages and contribute to misunderstandings among the public. However, younger than millennials, another group seems caught up in not using the Internet for research period5. It's whatever comes up first, whatever is the top that becomes it. There's no feeling of being skeptical. There's just an acceptance of, oh, this device showed me something, it must be right. And I don't know how to solve that without it worsening over time.
This has to be related to the education programs. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (pre-covid, so not an excuse), only 37% of high school seniors were proficient in reading, and 24% were proficient in math5. This lack of proficiency suggests that the education system doesn't adequately develop critical thinking and the ability to analyze new information. Without these skills, students face significant challenges when confronted with new ideas requiring them to reassess their beliefs as adults (and voters).
For example, I cannot tell you how often my kids in this group have not been researching anything. Kids who have grown up with not only the Internet but also iPhones and iPads and everything has been available, you know, all this technology. And they ask a question that I don't know. And I encourage them to look it up. They just say no. They don't want to look it up; whatever it is, it doesn't matter. There's this disconnect. Where do we even begin to start to resolve that? And it's not a curiosity issue because the questions are still being asked. But the work of finding the answer is not being done. Plus, the belief in and the trust in what one is reading is missing.
So, why do Millennials do so much better at managing disinformation? Again, this is a sweeping generalization, but only one generation here seems to be actively trying to understand its dangers. And maybe I'm biased because I'm in that group. However, I keep looking at user behaviors around general and informational Internet usage. Millennials appear to engage more actively in verifying information and understanding its implications. Millennials are more likely than older generations to consult multiple sources before forming an opinion on current events6. This generation grew up during the rise of the internet and social media, which may contribute to their adeptness at navigating digital information and recognizing potential misinformation.
Furthermore, when these younger generations match the older generation, it becomes a giant chasm between them, where sanity, skepticism, and critical thinking sit in this pit that no one wanders through except for millennials.
So, the question remains: How do we address this? Can technology play a role here? My fear is that we keep throwing technology solutions at it without addressing the core issue: critical thinking. Schools are not doing great teaching this, and it’s become looked down on in some circles. As individuals, we can not be responsible for others’ lack of understanding all the time, but we can make sure not to spread the mis/disinformation more. We can also be quick to comment to help correct the; it’s exhausting, but just helping one person get the right info might help. Then again, people seem happy with not knowing better.
It’s something I’ll continue to write about and explore. I believe this fits in with the state of AI and software, so there is plenty to discuss.
I’m not naming any groups, but everyone can think of an example, and I’m sure of it.
Trickles up? Out? Regardless, similar to economic policies, this trickle harms the population.
The difference between misinformation and disinformation is critical. Misinformation is wrong, and DISinformation is wrong and deliberately intended to mislead.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing-confusion/
This seems counterintuitive, but talk about things with someone of this age and ask them to look up an answer.
https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Millennials-Report-FINAL.pdf