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PSA: My mom's "just Google it" comment made me realize how much I trust the algorithm
Visited my parents last weekend and my mom was trying to figure out why her indoor basil was wilting. She pulled out her phone and said "let me Google it" and I automatically said "oh, just look up the top result, it's usually right." She looked at me and said "you trust that thing to be correct?" and I just froze. She's 62, never had a smartphone until three years ago, and she's already more skeptical of search results than I am after a decade online. I've been clicking the first link for plant care, recipe substitutions, even medical symptoms without thinking twice. It hit me that I've outsourced my judgment to whatever algorithm decided was most popular or sponsored. Has anyone else caught themselves blindly trusting the first Google result and had to pull back?
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gibson.avery1mo ago
Hits different when you realize we've all been trained to trust the first thing that pops up without thinking. I noticed this with recipes especially-I'll google "easy chicken dinner" and click the very first result, not even checking if it's from a legit site or just some SEO farm. Same with troubleshooting my wifi, I'd just do what the first link said without questioning if it applied to my router model. The algorithm is basically a popularity contest, not a truth meter, but we treat it like it's been vetted by experts. My dad’s the opposite, he’ll scroll through three pages of results before clicking anything, and honestly that’s probably healthier. We gotta rebuild that muscle of skepticism because the internet isn’t actually smarter than us, it just replies faster.
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nathan9011mo ago
Used to be the same way, first link was gospel to me. This post made me realize I've been lazy and letting some algorithm do my thinking for me.
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