Crowdsourcing: the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers
The Internet is an okay place to start your research, particularly if you are looking for basic information on a current event or debate or if it is a topic you really don't know much about, like string theory.
The more you do research and develop your skills, the more you'll be about to sort the good from the not so good.
You'll be about to quickly identify what is useful and what is not. Part of what you will learn in college is the critical evaluation of available resources, especially on the Internet and social media.
Today, being "digitally literate" is another part of being information literate. To find out more, click here.
"The Internet shows us what it thinks we want to see." -Eli Pariser