I’ve discussed our generation’s ample use of social media so much in this column, that it may as well become a motif. And trust me, I know that I’m perpetually toeing the line between thoughtful discussion and nagging, repetitive discourse, but I do think there’s much to be gained from analyzing why we act the way we do. And one of the actions our generation is most known for is how we consume most of our news from social media sites.

Twitter, for example, has quickly come to represent much more than just an app that people use to keep in touch with their friends. In a 2017 survey published by the Pew Research Center, 74 perent of Twitter users said that they used the app to get their daily news while 29 percent of Snapchat users claimed to use Snapchat for news consumption.

But this is not the only evidence of the overall shift in American news media; even traditional news outlets like The New York Times have seen an abundant percentage of their subscriber base go paperless, with 75 percent of their subscribers paying only for the digital version. The last time I opened up a newspaper was when I was posing for a picture impersonating my grandfather, and outside the two seconds it took for my sister to snap that picture, I have never once relied on the newspaper for my news. Print media, it seems, has become a thing of the past.

Obviously, the reason why it has become obsolete in recent years is because a newer, more efficient model has replaced it–online media. Having thousands of articles at your fingertips is exciting, even to the most apathetic among us. You can find articles about any topic, from politics to the rapidly declining bee population to movie reviews from people with questionable interests. The human race has never had this much information so readily available to us, and logically it would seem that we are on track to be the smartest generation this world has seen.

Unfortunately, as the Tide pod challenge has evidenced brilliantly, this is not the case. We can’t blame online news media for the majority of this generation’s intellectual shortcomings, but a lot of the reason why we formulate our opinions the way we do is because of the very news sources that have revolutionized information dissemination. We make snap judgements because news outlets post reports as quickly as they come in, sometimes without regard for the validity of these reports. That is the price we pay for having this information so readily available. With print media, there is a substantial gap between when the news outlets receive the information and when consumers have access to it; this means that journalists have time to ensure the material is sound and factual before publication.

Some cry that this information gap could lead to censorship, and that we ensure the transparency of journalism with the minute-by-minute news coverage made possible by social media. However, we must remind ourselves that demanding things quickly only reduces the quality in the long run. After all, that which is raw is not always pure.