I read a statistic the other day that almost half the folks under forty say their primary news source is Facebook? That totally astounded me. Yes, Facebook is a nice tool to keep up with family and friends, and even some not-so-friends but a primary news source?
But maybe I am old-school when it comes to where I get my news. I want my news to be verifiable and truthful, not just someone’s personal feelings. I want it fact-checked before it is presented to me. It takes a lot of effort to accomplish this and that takes resources and organization.
Hearing what Uncle Harvey thinks about things just doesn’t rise to the “news” level for me. Hearing someone quote at best half-truths and often outright lies to reinforce their agenda is not news to me and many times those posts are from Russia or others who are trying to influence our thinking about America.
Maybe I don’t spend enough time on Facebook to be able to understand its validity as a news source. According to many sources many Americans spend about an hour a day on Facebook! I suspect the “Friend” count for those is probably in the hundreds if not thousands. I guess my 2 – 3 minutes a day on Facebook makes me almost a non-user!
How about you? Is Facebook the primary source for your news? I would love to hear from those who say “yes”as to why they give it that level of importance.
RJ's Corner 
I think what is going on is that friends and family or people followed post news items on FB and this is used as a news source. It is a way to “filter” all the “news” into stuff that comes via people they “trust”.
I don’t use FB for news so maybe it is not this but it is one thing that seems probable to me.
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All newspapers, reputable news magazines and the main TV networks can be accessed through Facebook. So the news through Facebook can be the same as if you you watched news from your TV or morning newspaper. Plus there are sites like Snope that can verify the truth as best as anyone can, of the validity of a story.
That’s different, of course, than getting your news from friends and family and sites slanted and biased to the extreme that one might follow. So it depends.
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“Maybe I don’t spend enough time on Facebook to be able to understand its validity as a news source. According to many sources many Americans spend about an hour a day on Facebook!”
Obviously, my words from the post that are shown above are true. Thank you Mary for setting me straight. I just “friended” the New York Times and immediately got about a dozen new feeds for the day. I didn’t know you could do that. But I’m still skeptical that explains all the time people spend on Facebook. 😉
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