Did they really start considering the Moon a continent?

A continent is a piece of the Earth's crust of a certain thickness with characteristic density, and the Moon doesn't fit this definition. Its crust has completely different structure, without tectonic plates and lithosphere in the Earth's sense. So terminologically this isn't a reclassification, but rather a polemic move by some geologist or planetologist who decided to push the idea into the media space.

The thing is, the Moon really is geologically interesting - it has ancient highlands, depressions, craters. But calling it a continent means blurring the definition of the term itself. If you reason that way, then Mars, Jupiter's moons, and basically any solid celestial body with complex terrain could be declared continents. That would just make the word meaningless.

If you want to dig deeper into this question - check the original source where this information came from. Usually these kinds of claims get quoted through a chain of blogs and media outlets, and the original article or presentation can sound completely different from the simplified retelling. When I run into some controversial information, I always look for the source publication rather than relying on other people's retellings - many times it turns out that what's written there is far less radical.

I remember my son brought home a clipping from some science magazine about five years ago where they wrote about "the Moon as the seventh continent." I was pretty confused at the time - I showed it to my husband, and he laughed and said it was someone's fantasy. Then I googled it myself and figured out that it wasn't actually an official reclassification, more like an intellectual joke or an attempt to grab attention.

The thing is, a continent is a geological formation on Earth with a specific structure: a lithospheric plate, the Earth's crust, gravitational interaction with the planet. The Moon operates by completely different rules - it's a satellite, its internal structure is different, and it doesn't just fail to meet the definition, it's in a completely different category altogether. When people talk about the "seventh continent," they're either joking or referring to some kind of conditional status to emphasize the Moon's significance for science.

There was no actual reclassification - the geological definitions of a continent stayed the same. And the story about the academic is more like an attempt to say something catchy for science than a serious change in our understanding. It's not the first time that behind an attractive-sounding statement there's just a conventional label.

When you see news like that online, it's always worth checking the source - it's often either an old article from years ago that's being circulated again, or a quote taken out of context from some science popularizer. The Moon remains Earth's satellite by all scientific criteria, and no authoritative organization has reclassified it as a planet. If you spot something like that on social media, just google the author and publication year - it becomes clear pretty fast.

As for the source - these ideas often come up in the context of geological research on the Moon's highlands, where there really is thickened crust that's similar in structure to Earth's continents. But that's more of a curious scientific fact than a reason to rewrite geography textbooks. The Moon simply isn't on Earth, and our whole system for classifying continents is tied specifically to Earth's geology - the distribution of tectonic plates, continental drift, interaction with the mantle. The Moon would need completely different terminology, if we were even going to introduce any at all.