“If you took the internet away, those sorts of people would either do the same kind of superficial, shoddy research using books, or just wouldn’t do anything at all (books, you know, being too difficult).”

I completely agree with this for adults. Children, left to their own devices, will do shoddy, superficial research no matter what because they’re just starting out. The whole point of education in this matter is to get them to the point where they can do quality research using any source. Requiring them to not use the Internet forces them to do crummy research in books, and over time they’ll get used to doing research period. Once they’re good at researching in the structured, guided confines of a book, you can start helping them to tame the Internet research wilderness.

In a school setting, it may be harder to enforce the “no Internet” rule because you’re constantly battling motivation issues that you have little effect over. Be too strict, and you risk losing the dicier kids wholly. In a homeschool, you have much more control because a) you have more authority than any teacher and b) you’re operating at a 1:1 teacher/student ratio.

In any case, I strongly agree with your overall point that the problem (in the problematic kinds of cases) is not the internet per se, it’s the lack of motivation and judgment and seriousness of the person relying exclusively on dubious internet sources. If you took the internet away, those sorts of people would either do the same kind of superficial, shoddy research using books, or just wouldn’t do anything at all (books, you know, being too difficult). So I would say the only thing the internet changes is that it makes it possible for somebody to bang something shoddy out slightly easier than they could 20 years ago. But that’s really not an important difference since the shoddiness is easy to detect.

I also wanted to say something about the idea of helping kids develop good judgment about which sources to trust, etc. Something I’ve found over the years (motivated in part by AR’s theory of concepts, and in particular the idea of “foils”) is that it’s really helpful to bring the “as opposed to what” perspective into explicit focus. In teaching physics, this means (for example) teaching students not only what is true, but about plausible-but-false theories from history. And, another example, sometimes showing them (in explicit step-by-step detail) a *wrong* way to approach or solve a given problem. It gives them the perspective they need to appreciate (better) what’s true/right. Anyway, the point was just that you (as a homeschooling parent someday, say) could apply this to this issue. For example, as part of the assignment to write a paper or report on a given topic, require (in addition to the usual sort of bibliography) an “un-bibliography” which lists several sources that cover this topic but in a dubious or wrong or biased or sloppy or untrustworthy way. That way you actually make the issue of “good” vs. “bad” sources, and the methods of judging between them, into an explicit part of the work, if that makes sense.