I have seen this first hand with so many of my educated friends and relatives who were reasonable folks before internet boom and now they come across caricature of dimwit person. With so much information available on internet they still chose to pick lowest quality sources.
It brings up an interesting question, though: Assuming for the moment that internet access actually increases hatred - is more hate towards a group a good tradeoff for empowering them by giving them internet access as well?
The elder generation believes some WhatsApp forwarded message so easily that WhatsApp and Facebook are political propaganda machines. Google about "Whatsapp University" meme. I honestly wish anything should not be allowed to be forwarded more than N times where N < 4. And I wouldn't care end to end encryption breaked on forwarded messages in order to fact check them.