People & Places: Don’t wreck on the information super highway

A couple of days ago, I was writing a story — as we journalists do from time to time — and I stopped to do a quick internet search.

I was writing a story about economic development. So I typed in the prompt “fastest growing city in New Mexico” to see where Los Lunas fell in that category. I remembered that economic growth was something that was being mentioned a lot about the village recently.

The top answer surprised me. It was Barton, N.M. Never heard of it. I’m pretty sure this is the first time you all are hearing about it, too.

Barton is a teeny-tiny town, just outside Edgewood, in the East Mountains. The Wikipedia entry for the town says it’s a CDP — a census-designated place.

What does that mean? Wikipedia defines it as “a concentration of population defined by the U.S. Census Bureau for statistical purposes only.” It’s actually not even a town or a village or a municipality.

So listing it as the fastest growing city in New Mexico is a bit… squirrelly. Why am I bringing this up, you ask?

Because when using the internet, it’s important to take that one extra step to make sure what you’re putting out there is correct, and in context.

If I had been doing a general story about economic development in New Mexico, and not something specific to Los Lunas, I might have put this little factoid out there with no context, and it would have been hella confusing.

See, the “town” of Barton has the largest annual change in population in our state from 2024 to 2025. Sounds impressive, right?

In reality, Barton grew only 7.19 percent. Not very impressive at all. Also, Barton’s population in 2024: 1,451. In 2025: 1,923. They added just under 500 people. That’s not even half the growth of Los Lunas, which grew by just more than 2,900 in a year.

Taking that extra step out into the internet would have made things better. Right? OK. Some of you are right now saying to yourself, “Who cares? It’s just the internet.”

Well, in case you haven’t noticed, a lot of people spend a lot of time on the internet. There’s a lot of disinformation and misinformation on that very same internet. So to keep the place useful, we might wanna start “checking our sources,” as they say in journalism school.

Don’t get this twisted. I’m not saying you all should treat life like you’re reporters or private investigators or internet sleuths (Don’t get me started).

All I’m asking is that you take the one extra step to make sure what you’re posting to your social media account of choice is based in reality. You see, my friends, now that artificial intelligence has become available to all, there’s a lot of BS floating out there on the interwebs.

The information superhighway is now chock full of dead ends, potholes and unfinished asphalt, and we’re all out here speeding along at 90 miles an hour, thinking everything is fine.

It’s not fine, people. You know what happens when you hit a pothole going 90 miles an hour in real life? It ain’t pretty.

So, as a wise man once said, “Check yourself before you wreck yourself.”

Before you run to your computer or smartphone to post some possible nonsense, take that one extra step to make sure you’re not making things worse.

If we can’t make the real world a better place, the least we can do is not make our virtual reality worse.