Ok, this is not going to be a well formulated question, because the concerns behind it are nebulous in my own head.
Some assumptions I have, that clearly inform the question that follows: I believe commercial, state, and others have sophisticated methods of influencing what I see on social media and thus, in part, what I think. I also believe that someone more willing to believe in the types of conspiratorial beliefs I’ve just expressed are more likely to be manipulated by information they’re exposed to. And, yes, I fully appreciate the irony of those beliefs.
My child is adult enough that belief patterns I encourage are very unlikely to become deep patterns. That is, I’d have to work to indoctinate my son, and he’d actively resist if my indoctrination was outside of societal norms.
He didn’t grow up exposed to the social media I suspect children do now.
How does a parent inoculate a child to the influence of social media without also creating a mindset willing to believe in a nebulous “them” that controls things—a mindset, I believe, that makes a person more likely to be controlled?
Well, there’s not just one Them.
The Them who wrote your American history textbook and glossed over the centrality of slavery to the Confederate cause, aren’t the same Them who write TV sitcoms that propagate stereotypes of bumbling clueless men entitled to dump all the emotional labor on their hyper-competent women partners.
The Them who fund intrusive social media, aren’t the same Them who dial down the yellow-light time on your traffic lights to catch more people with red-light cameras.
And the closer you look, the less it looks like a Them at all.
The individual TV writers were really trying to be good TV writers, in the social & economic context of TV studios.
The history textbook people were mostly actual professors. They want you to have a good history textbook. But the Texas Board of Education is giving them a hard time.
Heck, the social-media programmers mostly just wanna launch cool stuff.
The yellow-light people, though? They have no goddamn excuse.
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Yeah, but in the end all those people get their orders from higher up, and in the end they execute the vision of the people in charge. All of this only to get their pay to be able to afford to live with a roof over their head and food on the table.
It’s so hard to see from your perspective sometimes. Feels like everything’s a conspiracy haha. But you are 100% correct.
The “them” we feel is the sum of all human outcomes, personified as a discrete organism. Maybe all of humanity is one big mega-organism and thats the “them”.
My son was taught in school (UK) how to research on the web. You can never be sure how much they take in but he asked us one day why we were still watching the main stream news broadcasters - BBC, Sky, ITN. In a space of a couple of minutes he produced the original from the web for most of their stories, alternative views and pros and cons for most of the views. I learnt a lot that day and can honestly say I think his school did an excellent job. He does his own research and forms his own opinion - sometimes I don’t agree but that’s OK - the key is he can articulate his reasoning and provide evidence to support his view. I’m not sure as a parent if I’d have been as good a teacher or as impartial. I’m happy it’s part of the syllabus in UK - I’m really not sure I’d be so happy if we lived in Florida for the school to teach it. Too much state intervention.
For some reason this feels really strange to hear from the uk. I was under the impression things where moving more authoritarian with face detection cameras, encryption forbidden and id for pornsites. Usually those kind of government hate informed citizens and push propaganda. But maybe its just me who has been propagandized about the uk ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Encourage critical thinking skills and empathy. 👍
I agree. Reading is a good way of acquiring both specifically. Read things together and then talk about it to make them think.
Also some schools do critical thinking/philosophy courses.
Instead of focusing on specifics (online, “they”) focus on the basics.
Where does any piece of information come from? What are the underlying assumptions in it? How is it framed? How is it circulated? What effect does it have? Etc. If people automatically think critically, they are way less susceptible.
This comment reminds me of CrashCourse Navigating Digital Information which taught me fact checking and how to look up info on the internet. Playlist Here
I have no experience in teaching kids these concepts but I’m interested in them.
The key concepts to look at are information literacy, media literacy and when it comes to online things it’s dark patterns when it comes to user interfaces. https://youtu.be/kxkrdLI6e6M
I have read that Estonia has started “inoculating” kids in school against misinformation, this article touches a bit on some strategies. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220128-the-country-inoculating-against-disinformation
What I have found is that there are a lot of really good paid magazines and blogs that are really fun to read and are full of lots of accurate information instead of, well, you know. When I was a kid my dad would subscribe to discover magazine, popular science, popular mechanic, and national geographic and I would eat them all up, a lot of those stories have shaped me as an adult.
I wonder if I was in your position if I would gift my child whatever paid subscriptions were reasonable for magazines or blogs that encompasses their interests. My local library actually gives me most of these magazines in digital format for free and I still like reading them on my tablet. I suppose more modern versions of this would be. If you want to replace YouTube, I would look into giving them a nebula subscription and they’ll never have to hear another ad again.
Good luck, I remember being a teenager and I remember hating almost everything my parents proposed so I hope you can find a way to inspire your children and I don’t think it’ll be easy.
Teach him early and remind him often about how to vet his sources. Things like making sure you know who’s funding what you’re reading, what the political reputation of the sites you’re reading on are, and so forth.
Honestly, this is probably the single most important internet skill that exists, second only to (maybe) information security / data privacy, and I didn’t get my first serious classroom lesson on this until I was in my Master’s degree program. This is a skill people need from goddamn grade school these days.
Yes, it can be tedious, yes it can be exhausting, but if you want to understand who is, or could be, pulling your strings, you have to understand how to vet your sources. Never learning to do this is the path to Fox News viewership.
I found that Minecraft is actually a pretty good teacher. There are servers (like hypixel.net) out there where kids can play different games or buy plots of lands with coins to run shops and stuff.
My kid has seen people advertising bullshit, scams, manipulation, but also genuinely good and nice people but also betrayal from people he thought to be good.
The manipulation isn’t as good as in the real world. But it’s good enough for discussions on how it’s done in the real world.
Interesting concept to have Minecraft as a kind of safe space to learn about idiots and necessary precautions on the internet. My kids are 3 and 4, so the age of Minecraft is right around the corner and I’m looking forward to it :)
It all tastes practice. Critical thinking and learning what to look out for will go a long way. Search for digital literacy, which are being taught in some schools now
https://www.learningforjustice.org/frameworks/digital-literacy
https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/digital-media-literacy/what-is-fake-news/1/
I would agree with the other comments here and say the best thing to do would be to vet sources. Things like ‘looking through a commenter’s history’ or ‘reading the About Us section of a news site’ and ‘looking at more than just the top 3 results from Google for sources’.
I really agree with a lot of this. Especially information literacy, using libraries, and simply paying for the better services.
But also simply said. World is always changing and we do not have well understood, well documented strategies for shaping kids as their information/threat landscape evolves. Especially tue disinformation and other online threats were just not a topic until … 2017 or so. We there is a lot to learn.
In my mind there is no them, but individuals, trying to achieve their own goals. Everyone has some incentive to misinterpret and twist truth. It might be just so it fits with their own biases and world view little better. The only reasonable way to use information online is to follow evidence based information and look for trusthworthy official sources.
If you already know you have the correct worldview, then just present the data to him that would lead someone to believe in your worldview. You can’t be immune to ideology without having one of your own. Someone who drifts through life believing nothing will believe anything.
Part of what prompted my question is that I doubt I have the correct worldview because I believe I’m influenced.
It’s good you don’t want to be controlled but your child could be, anyway who gives a fuck you will die anyway… i have no children but if they want to be controlled i don’t give a flying fuck anyway they are free to be manipulated just as you don’t.
