I was having a discussion with one of my children – I won’t say which one, but let’s just say she is very much a part of the virtual generation – those who get most of their entertainment and information from the internet. The subject turned to, well, possibly global warming, ecology or food pollution.

The point was, my daughter had some facts. Or thought she had some facts. The gist was that these so-called facts, which she’d picked up online, were not only enormous and significant, but were being suppressed by the mainstream media. Everyone knew about these facts but were determined to ignore them, because these facts reflected badly on the government.

I pointed out to my daughter that I had some little experience of journalism and the news media, and that such a scenario was excessively unlikely. The idea that the whole news media could collectively shut down a story because it was uncomfortable to the government just didn’t make sense – not least because of competition, the search for status and the profit motive. Yes, facts could be suppressed because of libel laws and gagging injunctions – but not because of a conspiracy among, say, the editors of the Daily Mail, the Guardian and the Today programme. They all had too little in common and too much to gain by breaking a big story.

I waited, like a fool, for her to adjust her opinion. None was forthcoming. Quite the opposite. She became angry with me and in effect accused me of thinking I knew everything. Her conviction that there was an international media conspiracy going on to suppress uncomfortable facts was undiminished.

Children are remarkably gullible but absolutely impervious to reality

Now, this might mean nothing. Or it might mean a great deal. As it happened, the next day I came across an article in the New York Times entitled “How the internet is loosening our grip on the truth” – a very timely exposition of the post-fact society. The author suggests that we exist in smaller and smaller “fact-bubbles” and can choose to follow sources of information that merely mimic our own views.

What is happening seems to be a mass case of arrested development. Children can be remarkably gullible but also absolutely impervious to reality. You can tell them that a man comes down the chimney dressed in a red suit to deliver their Christmas presents and they will happily believe you. On the other hand, you can point out that the moon is not, in fact, made of green cheese, and they will call you an outright liar.

This confusion about the truth usually begins to disappear as children grow up and see that there are not only observable facts, but also collectively observable knowledge that is difficult to verify but must nevertheless be taken on trust. The idea that the Earth is (roughly) a sphere and orbits the sun is pretty much universally accepted, but very few know the science that proves it. It is taken as a matter of faith as part of our established store of knowledge.

It struck me as I argued with my daughter that the collective store of trusted knowledge is dwindling, despite the so-called information revolution. Adults, like children, tend towards the irrational, and the internet has become an immense tool for facilitating that tendency.

I worry for our children, because they live in a world of decaying trust that they seem powerless to resist. As universities become more about servicing paying customers than teaching critical thinking, and all knowledge takes on the aspect of being an optional individual extra chosen from a range of off-the-shelf opinions, we are condemning ourselves to think like children our whole lives. And as William Golding noted in Lord of the Flies, children, left to their own devices, can be very wicked indeed.

@timlottwriter