Students turned to the social media to get the 411 on what really occurred on October 24th; the Marysville Pilchuck shooting. However, are what people are tweeting about really true? Tempers are flared as students hear two or more different stories and don’t know which one to believe. Therefore, let’s get the facts straight.

FACT: All families are suffering and grieving over the loss of a family member or loved one. Some students just lost their best friend, and others are scared because they don’t know if their school is safe or not. People are suffering over this tragic event that occurred.

Getting the facts straight is difficult when students don’t know where to look. Credible sources such as the television news, like K5 and other local news channels, online news websites and family members of the people whose child had been injured or killed during the shooting would be decent sources to turn to. However, any social media website would not be the best source to trust. Some twitter accounts such as @breakingnews or @cnnbrk would be credible compared to the gossip mill that occurs on every average teenagers timeline. People who turn to any social media website such as: Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, or Instagram may be misinformed on the events that have occurred or the people who were affected.

Although, some facts may be true on social media websites, it’s easy for the facts to be distorted or changed in some way. Social Networking is just a bad case of playing telephone. To meet the requirement of 140 characters per tweet deleting words or phrases may make it easier to meet the criteria to post their tweet. Cutting out important information can cause people to misunderstand the information given or create a new rumor off the changed tweet. Cutting out information takes out small details that make a big difference, especially when every detail is important for the reader to fully understand the events that have occurred.

Just like the rumor mill at a typical high school, things are misread and distorted, so any one can perceive the fact from the inaccurate (some what true) rumor that is occurring in today’s society. Students hear one thing and soon run to tell another what the hot gossip of the day is and in some way what that one student hears is slightly changed when they run to tell another and this vicious cycle continues, and soon you hear a story that is completely different than the original. So how is it any different when tweeting? It’s not. The story changes, things are rephrased, and soon the story has changed into a million different stories. This reason is why social media should not be trusted. If curious of any events that occur, conduct research on credible websites and if looking on twitter believe the news tweets not the gossip that is tweeted by friends.