Most of us started out believing what the media told us with the caveat, "Don't believe everything you read in the papers." And this was even before television.
The Internet gave us some alternative views, which now has all but been bastardized by disinformation agents, media, and some government control. It was no accident that the US NSA wanted the world to know that they were spying on us. People now post the truth in fear.
So if you don't believe -- you are a 'conspiracy theorist' or a 'trufer' or a 'tin foil hat'. Just like it was very unfashionable in days of yore not to believe in God, you were an outcast, a weirdo -- so most people kept that opinion to themselves.
I don't blame the sheeple so much these days as the media is so powerful and the Internet is full of rubbish.
And youth doesn't seem to have any punch anymore. Where's the peace movement today? Maybe it's because everybody knows that the real war has been lost and the game is fixed. Like the late, great George Carlin said, "It's a big club, and you're not in it." Maybe everybody knows that.