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Teaching children about online manipulation without creating a paranoid world view subject to manipulation? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

32 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have a few thoughts on that one. First, I‘d try and teach that changing one‘s opinion based on new information is good and admirable and that not knowing something or not having an opinion on something one doesn‘t understand is fine.

Specifically for media, something like this paper is excellent though obviously not child friendly, I think even way too little adults are aware of this sort of framing that media and companies regularly do:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334400431_Controlling_the_Narrative_An_Initial_Investigation_of_Doublespeak

So trying to show/explain, how does framing something differently change the perceptions of people?

Another important thing in my mind is teaching something like Plato‘s allegory of the cave, so how we are presented the world is how we see the world and nobody knows everything about it because we only see a small part of it. That ties back in with my point about it being good to question one‘s beliefs from time to time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The abstract for that paper is very interesting. Thanks for that link.

I agree that developing critical thinking skills, a willingness to question one’s beliefs, and a comfort with not knowing enough to have an opinion are all ways to help protect from manipulation, and likely ways that don’t lead to conspiratorial thinking.