Ah, the internet. Good or Bad? Lots of information out there, unfortunately, people tend to ignore the source of that information, leading to all sorts of misconceptions.
As an example, there is a new type of word invented for people who use the internet to research health related topics, it's called CyberChondria. If you get any type of illness, from a common cold to cancer, you can scare yourself half to death by reading posts from people who have these conditions. One thing I've realized over time is that the people who tend to post about their illnesses usually aren't doing that well, they are suffering therefore they post. The ones who are doing well, usually don't post at all. This creates a preponderance of very negative posts, which newly diagnosed people flock to, and scare the wits out of themselves. As a trained scientist, I can't tell you how many of my friends and family have made this mistake. I now make it a point to educate everyone I can to always choose reputable sources on-line when researching health related topics. Random sites with hysterical posts are not the way to go when dealing with health related matters. The same logic applies to anything one researches on the internet, look at the source, look at the motivation for posting, figure out if the agenda of the site is neutral, and go from there.
Hopefully, I can impart the same type of rigor to my students, so they don't grow up to be ignorant of how to use information from the internet correctly.
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