Erosion of skills

A wise man once said that "A lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on". I think that these days it could also be expressed that "A lie can get 1000 re-tweets before the truth has signed into his account". The Internet provides us with more information than ever before. I can be an expert in any subject I want simply by Googling the right string of words. My question is: Does this freedom of information make us less able to think for ourselves.

Two examples:

1) Our friends over at Reddit.
A post appeared on Reddit calling peoples attention to a lawyer openly bragging on Facebook about sending an innocent man to prison. Someone saw the Facebook post in question, screen-capped it, and put it on the web for everyone to see under the title Douchebag Lawyer. Why haven't I provided a link you ask? The post was taken down after it came out that actually the guy was a law student in a mock trial that was having a joke with classmates online after the event. Not a real lawyer, probably not a douchebag, and no innocent man sent to prison.

2) I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you pesky poppies.
Almost every one's Facebook will have at least one post like this:

Yes, that says 1102 people read this and shared it with their friends on Facebook. Why is that a problem? Because it is an excellent example of the Cherry Picking Fallacy as well as providing a great example of people reacting with insufficient knowledge to do so. A more specific explanation can be found HERE, by the way.

I'm using these two examples to suggest that in an era where information can change hands at the speed of light (literally) we are happy to sacrifice critical thinking in favour of speed. XKCD joked about how wikipedia is used in place of actual understanding (by almost everyone, I expect). As a university student I find myself under threat from misinformation constantly - my Facebook feed looks like the final resting place of the Snopes archive, my essays need to be triple checked to make sure someone elses presumptions don't make it in, and my friends and I talk about what they read online as evidence in every argument or discussion.

I have no solution here, merely the advice that if you read something online you should research it, or at the very least check the sources. There are so many ways to find things out factually, so please don't just be a reactive narrow minded person. Read what you see and think "Is this really true, or am I just seeing another person's agenda?". Oh, and FYI, here's some evidence that this is a legitimate phenomena and I haven't made it up...