The age of lies

Younger generations are harder to fool. They know how to look for information better than their parents and they know how to distinguish truth from lies more easily. They have learned to always be on their guard.

The dilemma of the new times is being able to distinguish between information and lies; the great dilemma is being aware that things are neither black nor white. The grey area is very broad and that is exactly why truth polygraphs have already added other variants, such as 'true, but...'. And the difficulty lies right here, in the grey area. It is easy to light the fuse of a fake or tainted news story, just as it is easy to spread a rumour: any lie or rumour must be at least somewhat plausible to be successful, to be repeated and shared. A lie, as liars know very well, must be credible to be effective. Social media, the overwhelming number of information channels and the information itself, the lack of time and availability to see, read, listen and think, are fertile ground for misinformation to take hold and for us to enter the realm of lies. We have polygraphs to deflect the truth from the news as if it were a mega-errata at the end of a book. And this is considered normal. It should not be. A channel, a newspaper, a website cannot and should not, under any circumstances, publish fake, tainted news, full of half-truths whatever their intention or reason.

But just as we teach children, lies have short legs. The only way to combat this avalanche of false information, gossip and misperceptions that constantly reach us through our mobile phones is with true information, whether it is popular or not, complicated or simple. Informing beforehand so that we don't have to deny it later when no one is paying attention and there is almost nothing that can be done. And the tricks of artificial intelligence and the immediacy of social networks with their one-minute videos make this task almost impossible.

The good news is that young people are not stupid. They don’t swallow everything that comes to them on their phones and it is still the brands and channels that give them some guarantee of the veracity of what they read and hear. Our children grew up at a time when they are supposed to be suspicious. Trust in institutions, in older people and in well-spoken people has already borne fruit. From politicians to influencers, including journalists and commentators, everyone is a potential liar. However, the younger generations are harder to fool. They know how to search for information better than their parents and they know how to distinguish truth from lies more easily. They have learned to always be on their guard.

With them, the world will certainly return to paper, to face-to-face contact, to conversations instead of messages. We are in an age in which authenticity is demanded and only physical presence and what is printed has a greater guarantee of authenticity. The world of the post-truth era is condemned, and rightly so, by the new generations who, like Saint Thomas, have to see to believe. You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time, said Lincoln (unverified information).