The #Broomchallenge

Social media impacts so much of our daily life. A big trend on social media right now is getting brooms to stand up. A rumor that NASA stated that you could stand up a broom on one certain day because of the earth’s gravitational pull. NASA never made this statement, and they even stated that it was not true. However, this hasn’t stopped the trend from taking the internet by storm. It is posted all over Tiktok and Twitter. The #broomchallenge is showing a good example of the impact social media has over our society.

I generally think of myself as someone who fact-checks frequently because I don’t like to spread false information. I often find myself fact-checking and posting the fact check in comments to make sure emotionally charged news isn’t being spread. But with the #broomchallenge, I never even thought to make sure it was true. I think this goes to show how easy it is to just believe the things we see on the internet. It reminds me that while I do try to fact-check political information, it’s so easy to forget and it reminds me to have compassion when I get frustrated that false news is being spread.

I’m not sure how our generation will turn out if we don’t find a happy medium between believing what we see and checking to make sure it’s accurate. I hope that soon the news that we see from politically biased news sources starts to become more truthful and uses less emotionally charged words.