Social media should be a place to state your opinions on anything from important issues to what the Kardashians wore yesterday. These online forums also provide a constant flow of information ranging from sources as credible as the BBC to your old friend from seventh grade. This is precisely why we need to know what we are talking about before we publish something under our names.

It is easy for anyone to get caught up in a controversial issue online. For starters, the dialogue is not being held face-to-face, making it much easier to attack someone who does not particularly agree with you. However, this convenience also means that you have time to develop an intelligent response to what someone else just posted. This response could be formed by reading articles.

Reading an article generally only takes a few minutes, which is why there is no excuse for sounding ignorant online. As college students, we should be reading articles daily in order to stay informed on what is happening in the world. If you have time to scroll Facebook, you have time to at least skim over an article before speaking on any subject.

Another problem that can make intelligent college students look ignorant is posting an article to your page before reading it.

Over Christmas break, I watched someone post an article to Facebook that stated that Malia Obama was pregnant and then delete the post minutes later. Her source? Empire News, “a satirical and entertainment news website,” according to their website. If she had just skimmed across the painfully short article that was dripping with satire, she never would have posted it to her page in the first place.

That particular instance, however, only temporarily embarrassed the young woman. These slip-ups can become much more serious, especially when it comes to topics such as Michael Brown’s death. I am sure all of us can remember when the Internet exploded with thoughts on the lack of an indictment in the Michael Brown case. This particular event brought about eloquent responses from our peers.

Unfortunately, during times like those, many peoples’ worst sides also came out. There were an alarming amount of instances in which people posted articles that they not only had failed to read, but that were not from reliable sources and stated offenses that particular person would have never agreed with.

Though this example was an extreme case, it highlighted for me exactly what can happen when intelligent people stop reading what is right at their fingertips. If we all just took a few minutes to read the facts of real news happening around us, we could avoid the amount of rumors and misinformation that sneaks into our heads.