I think people's heuristics naturally change. You could spend entire evenings watching television a couple of decades ago. Now too, but now there are competitor

I think people's heuristics naturally change. You could spend entire evenings watching television a couple of decades ago. Now too, but now there are competitors. (Unfortunately you can also scroll while in bed and really most places outside your living room.) There is probably at least a million times more informational content now compared to three decades ago. But is that information filtering/overload a problem which is proportionally bigger? Not really. The major “problem” is that people have changed their heuristics from trusting the Mainstream Media to a wide variety of more and less legitimate sources. So before people might think “I don't trust this because a journalist didn't say it” while now they might think “I actively distrust it because a journalist said it”. (Of course that's just one example of many heuristics now that we are all so “fragmented” (Oh no! Filter bubbles!).) On another note: these academic/straight-laced approaches to the problem (or supposed problem) feel just like being back at school. You are given homework which is ostensibly about making you an independent “citizen”, but the coursework and framing is so narrow and top-down that it's more of an exercise in being instructed by credentialed experts. Maybe school really is (and ever was post-Prussian Empire) a factory for conformity.