The Illusion Of Utility: The Stark Gap In Quantity Vs. Quality Of Educational Media

19th-century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote “Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink…” in his poem “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”  Although the protagonist was referring to the sea, this observation is equally applicable to information in the digital age: there’s data all around us, yet its quality is degrading.  This is especially concerning given the emphasis society places on education as a means of upward mobility.  Unfortunately, the accessibility of the world wide web may be nothing more than an illusion. 

A staple in the programming space, Stack Overflow is the go-to source for frustrated developers receiving over 50 million visits per month.  And while the site has no dearth of information, I can’t say I’ve found it to be very useful in times of need.  This is ironic given Stack Overflow exceeded 16 million questions posted by 2018.  I even posted one of my own several months back and go zero replies: such low engagement is expected of a more superficial platform.  Though, for a resource so often recommended for learning, it’s odd that one needs to master some obscure technique for soliciting help. 

Likewise, Chegg is a source for finding worked homework and assignment problems.  Granted, I couldn’t find explicit data on the number of questions contained within Chegg’s domain, but it’s obvious the site has a substantial digital footprint.  Nevertheless, coding questions & answers are scarce.  And though there’s plenty of material in the science, math & engineering categories, most of it is chicken scratch.  Of course, a user can submit their own questions as opposed to sifting through the already answered ones.  However, that doesn’t up the probability of the replies being legible.        

Further, media behemoth YouTube is generally accepted as an educational resource.  But how much of the content is useful? Indeed, a 2018 study from Pew Research Center shows that, of the near 4600 participants, 51 percent used the site to learn new things.  Though of the educational videos I’ve watched, the ones that ultimately prove helpful is far from that ratio.  Rather, it seems like for every video I learn something from, five useless ones must be consumed.  An article from the Journal of Electrocardiology supports this claim, similarly concluding “The lack of quality content relating to ECG on YouTube necessitates that videos should be selected with utmost care” about a study on medical videos.  Thus, it’s safe to say YouTube is yet another epistemological disappointment. 

Moreover, this incongruency between quantity and quality isn’t specific to educational content.  The same scrutiny should be applied to entertainment: e.g., how many comedies do you have to watch before you laugh? However, this list wasn't meant to be exhaustive, but simply inspire a mass interrogation of the vacuity of 21^st century media, given its pervasiveness.  With that said, thanks for reading, and stay pissed.