I've recently learned that American Zoomers love to learn about politics, science, and history through YouTube videos. Kurzgesagt, CGP Grey, and many other capitalist funded trash
I've told a friend about France receiving billions in payments from "former colonies" for their "independence" every year and their first instinct was to search up a YouTube video in front of me to learn more while I was trying to Google for a primary source of the hard financial data and agreements signed
People were lecturing me about how Putin thinks and will act based on videos they've seen from CGP Grey (like Rules for Rulers LOL). As if a man like Putin can be so easily understood and predicted from a dumb tech bro who watched an 8 minute cartoon yt video, especially given the context that he is the leader of such an enormous country like Russia
Generational politics are dumb, and most people of every generation have terrible media literacy.
However, I stand by the statement that (among Amerikkkans at least) media literacy peaked with millennials. This is due to the specific material circumstances that shaped the US millennials' encounter with the internet.
Honestly feel that the term "google it" was an aspect of millennials being that we had the initial ability to track sources of information down quickly, now the internet is a clusterfuck demon meant to suck up your time with distraction which can be fun but also fucks with your means of having a reliable attention span.
I think it was the combination of being young enough to master the internet, but also old enough that you didn't grow up with it so you had an actual attention span. Also not growing up with smartphones helped.
Not gonna toot my own horn too much but I think you're right. Between adbuster gen x and corporations taking over the internet was sort of a weak point in advertising.
The early internet was a lot less a capital wasteland and was filled with well intentioned academics and hobbyists that were in love with a new technology. A lot less motivated by profit. So the internet itself was an arguably better source of information than the modern internet in general. Zoomers will never know the ad-free, Correct the Record-free, pirating-is-easy-but-dangerous internet
I'm seeing this at schools and yeah reading comprehension is garbage compared to the decade before it.