Of course there's something stopping them from learning. It's called their own lack of understanding. Take virtually any topic about anything and do a search f

Of course there's something stopping them from learning. It's called their own lack of understanding. Take virtually any topic about anything and do a search for it on the internet. If it's even remotely controversial, there will be thousands of pages screaming at each other in opposition to each other. Meanwhile, the academics who are doing actual research are sitting over there in the quiet corner, making an attempt to cut through the bullshit. It definitely gets easier to cut through the bullshit on your own once you've been around the block a few times, but that's as an actual adult with an actual education, not a child who doesn't know much about anything or a man-child who can be convinced to believe the truthiness of a topic. The internet is a problem because actual knowledge is often boring. There's no controversy in many fields amongst scholars because they've either exhausted the research on a topic or there's so much data supporting the general consensus that it's not likely to budge. People don't get excited about knowing the things that everyone should know. They get excited about knowing the hot, new thing regardless of whether it's even verifiable or valid.