If I told you Hitler did more good than Mother Teresa, you might dismiss it immediately - and rightly so. A genocidal dictator versus a nun devoted to serving others seems incomparable. Yet, the way people assess information online often ignores evidence entirely. or the first time in human history, we can communicate instantaneously across the globe, access nearly limitless knowledge, and experience diverse cultures without leaving our homes. In theory, this digital window to the world should broaden understanding and foster sympathy for victims of cruelty. Yet, the opposite is happening. People believe anything they see online, making judgments before seeing the whole picture. This may be the beginning of a moral decline. With concerns about illiteracy growing, I fear this trend reflects a lack of research and empathy among youth. Minor mistakes provoke disproportionate hatred, which I believe is closely connected to being chronically online. The internet has become an absolute courtroom, and everyone is a judge. I will elaborate on this in the next section.
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
— Mark Twain
The pattern or the cognitive architecture of online belief starts with motivated reasoning bias which is amplified when information is abundant and accountability is low. Miller, Saunders & Farhart (2015) found that people with more political knowledge but low trust are ironically more likely to believe conspiracy theories. Confirmation bias only reinforces this: as Modgil et al. (2020) show, during events like COVID-19, people seek information that confirms their existing beliefs. In these situations, emotion often substitutes for evidence; a finding confirmed by Martel, Pennycook, and Rand (2020). Heightened emotionality at the start of a session predicted greater belief in false headlines, peculiarly anxiety, in particular, drives both belief in and willingness to share claims of any type - true or false - especially among those already predisposed (Freiling et al. 2021). We can see this in sensationalist news: headlines are often written without documents or charts, yet people instantly believe them and make senseless judgments. The rise of AI further complicates this, as AI-driven choice architectures manipulate attention and undermine autonomy, proposing “cognitive boosts” as a countermeasure (Kozyreva, Lewandowsky & Hertwig (2020). Social bots disproportionately amplify low-credibility content in the early moments before articles go viral (Shao et al. 2018), and Twitter's engagement-based ranking amplifies out-group hostile content-and that users do not even prefer it (Milli et al. 2023). An invention intended to push humanity toward a better future is now often used to spread falsehoods that entertain our fantasies, making us less able to confront reality. Elsewhere, I am disappointed to see humans foolishly believing everything to the point it becomes ridiculous. The internet has become a courtroom with everyone as a judge, yet there is no justice or sympathy. It has become a place where anyone can freely form an opinion without consequences.
2. The Unseen Story: Why Empathy Matters
“Judging a person does not define who they are. It defines who you are.”
- Wayne Dyer
Last month, I conducted the intersection of state power and authority and there was a section where I compared “cancel culture” to an ex-communication the Catholic Church practiced.In the past, forms of punishment like excommunication allowed for grace and eventual forgiveness. Today, however, cancelled culture often leaves no room for redemption. Viral accusations and algorithmic amplification erode the presumption of innocence, turning justice into a spectacle. Tandol et al. (2020) found that canceling culture involves perceptions of power imbalance and social justice, and belief in a just world negatively predicts participation. Additional reports show that viral accusations and algorithmic amplification shift justice from legal processes to performative spectacle (Stefanoaia 2025), and one even frames cancel culture as a form of “ideological purging” driven by virtual collective consciousness (Velasco 2020). Anonymity also increases aggression: behind a screen, users feel protected, making harsh judgment easier. John Suller identified six factors-dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority- all together lower the psychological barriers to harsh judgment. Dehumanization further amplifies this phenomenon. An article by Carpenter et al. (2021) shows how moral outrage online facilitates dehumanization, aggression, and withdrawal through group antagonism. Conversely Koetke, Conrique & Schumann (2021) show that exposing people to humanizing information about political out-group members reduces hostility and increases empathy - even toward others connected to the humanized member. The political world isn’t better with its "Us vs Them" mentality and the obvious attempt of polarization going. People fail to see others as human simply because they disagree. Cyberbullying is widespread, and research shows cyberbullies display lower empathic responsiveness and higher moral disengagement, while cybervictims show higher cognitive and affective empathy (Arato et al. 2020). O'Reilly(2025) used Schrödinger's cat as an analogy for digital empathy - in online spaces, the consequences of negative behaviour for others are hard to discern, making empathetic responses inherently uncertain.
When we believe things without looking into them and judge people without trying to understand them it is because we are not thinking about them as people. If you do not check what someone is saying you are not trying to imagine what is going on inside their head. The things that get the attention online make money from people being too quick to believe things and from people being mean. To stop this we need to slow down and think more. We need to pause, check if something is true and look into it before we believe it. We also need to remember that there is a person behind every post, not just a name on a screen. People we do not know who are online can. Be honest or try to trick us but every person is able to change, say sorry and be kind. Do you think someone is bad just because someone else said so or because you saw one video about them? We live in a world where good people are often treated like they are bad. People who are harmful are treated like they are our friends. If we do not think carefully and try to understand people we might start to believe things that are not true and that would be bad for everyone. The internet has given us a way to connect with people, understand them and learn from them that we never had before. Whether it makes us smarter or just louder depends on if we want to think and be kind to people.
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this essay honestly makes a really good point about how people online believe stuff way too fast and act like they know the whole story after seeing one post. i liked how it connects fake information, cancel culture, and empathy because those things actually do go together more than people admit. some parts are a little intense, especially the opening comparison, but it definitely grabs attention and makes you want to know where the argument is going. the research makes the essay feel smarter and more serious, but it still has a clear message instead of just sounding like random facts. this made me think deeper about my social media usage too
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You made some incredible points in this essay that I feel are so important to point out and study. Great job and thank you for posting this! <3
hi christina!
Well, I think this is a strong and very relevant concept. The essay is trying to diagnose something real: the way the internet collapses evidence, judgment, outrage, punishment, and performance into one immediate reflex. That is a worthwhile argument, and I especially like the central metaphor of the internet as "an absolute courtroom." It is accessible, memorable, and flexible enough to carry the entire essay - everyone is a judge, everyone is watching, the accused is often absent, and the sentence is delivered before evidence is considered. I like that!
The opening is attention-grabbing, though I do think it is risky. Beginning with Hitler and Mother Teresa creates immediate moral contrast, which does establish the idea that some judgments seem obvious. HOWEVER, it is so extreme that it may distract from your actual topic -> the reader may start thinking about whether the comparison is appropriate rather than about online misinformation or moral judgment. It also slightly overstates your argument before you have built it. If your essay is about how people fail to assess evidence online, you do not necessarily need the most morally explosive comparison possible. A smaller, more internet-specific example might serve you better: a falsely accused creator, a misleading headline, a clipped video, a fake screenshot, etc. That would make the problem feel immediate rather than abstractly provocative.
^ Your thesis is present, but it needs sharpening; now, the essay argues several related things at once that people believe misinformation, youth lack research skills, online hatred is disproportionate, cancel culture lacks forgiveness, anonymity increases cruelty, algorithms reward outrage, and empathy is declining. These are all connected, but the essay needs to decide what its MAIN claim is. Is the argument that the internet encourages moral decline? that misinformation spreads because emotion replaces evidence? that cancel culture removes empathy from judgment? that digital literacy must be paired with compassion? You can include all of these, but they need to orbit one CENTRAL thesis.
For example, your strongest thesis is probably something like: online spaces encourage people to replace evidence with emotional judgment, and this creates a culture where misinformation spreads quickly, empathy declines, and punishment becomes performative rather than just.
The research section shows effort, and I respect that. You are clearly trying to ground the essay in actual scholarship rather than just vibes, which is important for a topic like this. The sources on motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, emotionality, bots, algorithmic amplification, dehumanization, and cyberbullying all seem relevant to your overall argument. The issue is not that you lack evidence; the issue is that the evidence often arrives in a compressed list rather than being fully interpreted. You cite Miller, Saunders & Farhart, Modgil et al., Martel, Pennycook, Rand, Freiling, Kozyreva, Shao, Milli, and others in rapid sequence, but the essay does not always slow down to explain WHY each study matters - they all have a reason beyond your citation, so slow down and explain!
Academic writing is not only about including studies! In a way, it is about digesting them for the reader. You want to move from "X found this" to "this matters because…" more consistently. For instance, when you mention that emotionally heightened users are more likely to believe false headlines, that is not just a fact. It supports your larger claim that online belief is not purely rational and often is shaped by anxiety. Say that clearly!
THOUGH, your essay currently has a major issue with tone. At times, it wants to be academic and researched; at other times, it becomes emotionally frustrated in a way that weakens the authority of the argument. Phrases like "humans foolishly believing everything" and "it becomes ridiculous" may reflect genuine frustration, but they also sound dismissive toward the very people you want to persuade. If your essay is arguing for empathy, you need to demonstrate empathy even toward the people who fall for misinformation. Otherwise, your essay risks doing the thing it criticizes: judging people quickly and harshly! It's realistic to be frustrated and "ranty," though you need to balance that finely.
^ This is especially important because your topic is moral judgment. If you frame online users as stupid or foolish, the essay reproduces the contempt it wants to critique. A stronger move would be to say that people are vulnerable to misinformation because platforms exploit ordinary human instincts: fear, loyalty, anger, belonging, and the desire for certainty, etc. That is more compassionate and more persuasive. It also makes the argument smarter because it shifts blame from individual stupidity to a larger digital environment; there's always going to be some rhyme and reason for a larger issue that you can fall back on.
I also think you should be careful with claims about youth and illiteracy. Those are BIG claims, and they require specific evidence. If you want to argue that young people are becoming less research-oriented or less empathetic because of chronic online exposure, you need data directly supporting that. Without any, it sounds generationally broad... sure, you have a point, but that point can't be supported with what the text is lacking now. The essay would be stronger if it framed the issue as platform-driven rather than youth-driven. This affects everyone, even if younger users experience it in specific ways.
Good work overall - this is thoughtful, ambitious, and very much worth revising at a later date. I'm looking forward to seeing your future works!
best,
cocteau