Those are anecdotes. In many ways, I would describe my own experience with the internet much like you did. Which is also irrelevant. What it causes on a mass scale is what matters.
Also, I would point out that whatever is good about the internet has little bearing on what is bad about it.
Well in my opinion the relevance comes into play when weighting the pros and cons of the internet. Should we seek to turn it all off or strive to fix the parts that are destructive. That would determine where we need to change the structure of the system as it currently exists.
The desire to believe is eternal, as it is a function of primordial tribalism. What has varied over time is, in fact, the amount of bullshit. Bullshit is remarkably effective, now and throughout history, whenever it has found an adequate distribution channel.
I don't think our system was any better then than now. At least not so far as teaching critical thinking, anyway. It's never been taught as a class in public high schools, or very rarely at best. Though it could be useful if taught correctly. So far as teachers teaching kids to be skeptical and so forth, I highly doubt that was more the case back then.
This was an era when most of a generation at least initially believed lies told about Viet Nam by the LBJ administration and lots of kids went and died or had their balls blown off. Back then, there were two trusted authorities: the government and the press. Things functioned pretty well so long as those two sources told the truth. And in the event the government lied, usually the media would expose it, eventually.
Nowadays with the internet everyone is a publisher and everyone's bullshit goes out to a wide audience. And of course we now have Fox News and other conservative "media." Combine that with the tribalism and gullibility which have always been features of humans, and you have the situation we're in today.
I think I would need a better grasp of history than I have to buy fully into these ideas. For example, I was rigorously trained to think critically in my high school English classes. We had to read many of the best books, determine what was being said and defend our positions with logical reasoning. When I was introduced to that I had a million thoughts and opinions none of whch I had the slightest idea how to express. I used to be regulary up at 2 in the morning struggling to get down on paper in thought some approximation of what I felt.
Yes, it's a huge problem. Take the prominent example of fossil fuels companies polluting our air going on 150 years now, then when they become aware of climate change, as Exxon did in the 1970's, they use their money to fund a dishonest denial campaign so they can continue polluting for $$$. And where has that campaign achieved its maximum exposure? On the internet.
OK but where they had their maximum effect, im my opinion, was in their lobby efforts in Washington DC. That is because of the system.
The issue you raise is co-extensive with the issue I raise.
And so, I believe, because they are similarly systemic in nature.
That question you ask rhetorically actually has an answer in my case. But it's rooted in parental influence and early childhood experiences. For example, not being taught to just believe in things that other people believe in without first asking questions. But the bulk of parents have never raised their kids that way, because they want them to believe the same things they believe.
Teaching your kids to believe in magical beings, for example, doesn't necessarily prepare them very well for living in the real world and figuring out what is actually real and what is not.
But I have always insisted that the need for conformity imposed on children by parents is to save then from the danger the herd poses by labeling and persicuting non-conformists as heritics. For example teaching children to fear damnation by a loving God destroys any sense of anything good coming of what is inalienable within. It turns the self against its own nature. The problem then is that what you call magical I would call real. The only thing unreal is how you see it, in my opinion. You dismiss the outward projection and miss the fact it is there as a reflection of what is real within. The whole idea that we are alone and separate arises systemically when that is what people believe.
We are the world in that we see what we believe. I had a rather strange experience the other night thinking about how thought creates the world that stopped me right there to pause to consider "What is it that is real?" I happened to be laying at an angle where I was looking at a colored towel draped over a desk by my bed. For just a brief second I started to really look at it and the color and dimensional nature started to come to life, maybe editically. Anyway, I suddenly remembered seeing things that way long ago. There came quite quickly a fear of that state and I assume so because there I sense a pain that I no longer experience seeing the world that way any more, as if it were all alive.
We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale
She said, there is no reason
And the truth is plain to see
But I wandered through my playing cards
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open
They might have just as well've been closed
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale
She said, 'I'm home on shore leave,'
Though in truth we were at sea
So I took her by the looking glass
And forced her to agree
Saying, 'You must be the mermaid
Who took Neptune for a ride.'
But she smiled at me so sadly
That my anger straightway died
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale
If music be the food of love
Then laughter is its queen
And likewise if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
Seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
And attacked the ocean bed
And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face at first just ghostly
Turned a whiter shade of pale
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