| Elder Gerard also addressed the issue of deepfakes three weeks later during a devotional for single adults that I covered in New York City. “The experts tell us that within the next year or two that we will not, unless things change or unless we become highly skilled, we will not be able to discern what is true and what is reality in the form of videos, memes, etc., and what is not true,” he said. He added during his talk at BYU-Idaho, “We have arrived at the point where technology can easily create alternative false realities. As a news anchor reporting on the subject said, ‘seeing isn’t believing anymore.’” My colleague Erica Evans at the Deseret News wrote this helpful explainer piece about deepfakes, but concerns continue to grow as the technology continues to improve. A Los Angeles Times reporter recently called on journalists to do a better job in 2020 of teaching media literacy. The Deseret News editorial board followed yesterday with an editorial that said “a general lack of media savvy is bad for democracy.” “In order to survive, freedom and self-governance require responsibility,” the editorial added. “There is no escaping the need for people to spend more time educating themselves thoroughly on candidates and issues, and from a variety of credible sources.” Elder Gerard gave youth and young adults religious counsel. “For each of us to come unto Christ and abide the day in which we live, to avoid the deceptive lures of the world that would take us from the covenant path, may I invite you to consider, or perhaps reconsider, two important principles,” he said at BYU-Idaho. “First, to follow the prophets with exactness by listening more completely to what they say; and second, as our prophet President (Russell M.) Nelson has counseled, we must learn to receive revelation.” In New York he added, “As we learn to hear the word of the Lord with great clarity, we will be able to discern truth from error, fake from not fake.” | 
