Google-Dependent and Plagiarists, Young People Fail on the Web

Google-dependent, disoriented and incapable of evaluating the credibility of a website. According to an American study, this describes young web surfers who use the Internet to do the majority of their research. “In Google We Trust” could be their motto, for it is the search engine, in many cases, that determines what they believe. What’s worse is that many trust indiscriminately in brand name companies and sacrifice the excitement of discovery for the advantage of mental laziness. The attack on the “digital generation” — those who grew up playing on the computer instead of with dolls and cars — comes from Northwestern University in Chicago. In a study published in the “International Journal of Communication,” the researchers analyzed mechanisms of “faith” that guide these web surfers in search of information. Among the most disturbing findings is the tendency to not distinguish pages suggested by sponsored links and a scarce interest in the author of a publication. According to some, from this lack of interest in authorship stems another phenomenon typical of the “internet generation:” the tendency to copy and paste without restraint, indicating an undeveloped form of plagiarism.

Out of Context

As explained by the researchers, judging the credibility of what is found on the web is a difficult task for students, not to mention one that is not often deemed necessary. In all likelihood, the problem depends on the structure of the Internet itself: that it presents all contents, regardless of quality, in the same format. Visually, a webpage is always a webpage, whether dealing with an article approved by an attentive scientific journal or the blog of a self-proclaimed astrophysicist. According to the authors of the study, it is this lack of contextual discrimination that is responsible for students’ disorientation in evaluating a website. This opens the door for search engines that, in students’ minds, assume the role that was once reserved for encyclopedias: giving a sense of order to its contents.

The Excessive Power of Search Engines

“That’s what Google said!” or “It must be true; I Googled it!” are some of the typical responses supplied by over 1,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 20 who participated in the study. For the researchers, affirmations of this sort demonstrate how search engines have become more and more important in defining the perception of what is reliable on the Internet. “In the end, companies like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Wikipedia have become the equivalent of the traditional custodians of knowledge. Students tend to blindly trust in the companies’ ability to provide the most relevant content.” According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, over 70 percent of people under age 30 see search engines as “complete and impartial sources of information,” even if 62 percent admit to not always be able to distinguish a sponsored link from non-sponsored ones.

At the Top of the List, in Credibility and Popularity

Not surprisingly, the order in which the results appear carries a lot of weight in the perception of their reliability. According to the study done at Northwestern, more than 25 percent of the students trusted the first link that appeared as a result of the search. In certain cases, those interviewed explicitly said that they considered the search engine as a relevant basis for evaluating the credibility of a source, as opposed to the website that had actually posted the work in question. Such admissions demonstrate that, among other things, there exists little to no knowledge of the mechanism that determines the visual order of the results (for example, PageRank, Google’s regulatory algorithm). In play is the distinction between the “popularity” and the “credibility” of a web page: Programs such as PageRank order the sites based on their number of connections with other IP addresses, a system that is an indicator of credibility, but is in no way a guarantee of quality.

When the Author Disappears

“There is another aspect that indicated young people’s trust in search engines,” explains Esther Hargittai, sociologist at Northwestern University: “The fact that many of them simply don’t feel the need to evaluate the results based on who wrote them.” Of the participants in the study, fewer than 10 percent searched for information on the author of a source, and even fewer lingered over their qualifications. Contributing to this disinterest, according to Teresa Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University, are the same factors that influence the “digital generation’s” approach to knowledge in the Internet era. “We find ourselves faced with a generation of students who have grown up with the idea of cyberspace full of information that doesn’t seem to have an author. In such an environment,” adds Fishman, “it is conceivable that concepts of authorship and intellectual validity become ever more blurred.”

Plagiarism Goes Unrecognized

That “who wrote what” is often unimportant to students is demonstrated by the nonchalance with which they copy and paste from the Internet. According to the Center for Academic Integrity, from 2006 to 2010, the number of Americans who maintain that copying from the web is a “serious violation of scholastic integrity” has diminished considerably: Today the number is only at 29 percent, down from 34 percent four years ago. As explained by the experts, the fact is that most people think that raising one’s hand and saying innocently, “Google said it, so not only is it true, but I can also copy it” is enough.