Viewpoint – Clickbait leads to distrust, confusion

Arelys Morales Conty/campus editorThe internet is full of people trying to pile up views by pulling the cheapest trick in the book: clickbait.

People go online to be informed or entertained, and clickbait gets in the way of that. The title of an article will promise the perfect advice for a problem, but will give you a block of useless text instead.

This gets frustrating to the point that readers won’t trust headlines after confidence has been betrayed over and over.

This isn’t unique to news articles. Clickbait can be found all across social media such as twitter threads with tabloid-worthy titles and YouTube videos with ridiculous thumbnails.

At this point, it’s almost expected to see a YouTube video title in all caps or a hard to believe headline.

It still doesn’t quell the annoyance that pops up when one comes across it.

In this age of social media where information can be dispatched at a moment’s notice, the worst thing to come of it is misinformation.

Readers should be able to trust online sources, especially in a time where everything can be fact-checked.

The job of news sites and social media alike is to provide a space where users can be enlightened about topics and learn more information.

It doesn’t just affect the experience of the viewer, it can also damage the reputation of a site or news source.

Sites shouldn’t throw away their legitimacy for a few more page views, they need to strive to keep their audience by not lying to them.

Readers won’t trust a site if they’re always lying to get them to read something they don’t want to.

It’s a waste of time and annoying.

Creators on YouTube do this by attracting viewers with a loud title promising something unbelievable, but the video itself won’t deliver.

This cheap trick to attract viewers and pile up clicks is doing the opposite, younger watchers now are growing up on clickbait and are becoming immune to it earlier.

The consequence leaves people unsatisfied and deceived, two things that creators and writers should avoid if they want viewers at all.