The irony of every panic that TikTok is turning the kids into transsexuals/CCP agents/terrorists is that everything we know about who is susceptible to misinformation and propaganda online suggests the kids are not, in fact, the problem
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Let's not go too far. Our kids haven't been advertised to as much as us. We do need to guide them as they learn that people will lie to them for profit. Mine will believe almost anything if a confident and charismatic YouTuber says it. Constant monitoring/dialogue is necessary.
I just read in a comment above that TikTok is "a force for good." Fake news and propaganda aside, does it occur to anyone that a way of sharing information based on entertainment and mass narcissism, compressed into 15-30 seconds videos, MIGHT not be good for humans of any age?
That's not the whole of the platform, though. Dance & joke videos tend to match that description, sure, but vids can be up to ten minutes long and verification has standards (unlike x or ig now). Lots of responsible journos, activists, artists, et al on tiktok are making informed, quality content.
TV has also been important and valuable, but it coexisted with written culture and other media, in a very complex system of content production - more complex than any verification, blue tick or moderation on the social networks. Obviously, the idea of bypassing all this is very appealing >>
But kids left alone to lose themselves on the Net are not the same as opponents to dictatorships. The same tools can be useful or lethal. (All this without considering the fact that TikTok is a tool of Chinese soft power).
I'm not following what you're trying to get across here. I think there's a disconnect because you haven't experienced the platform you're arguing against.
I wonder if younger folks are susceptible but to a different approach. I'm thinking for example of young people in the west whom ISIS was targeting for recruitment. Even before that some of the more prominent religious cults were known for focusing their recruitment efforts on younger people.
Yes. Kids who grew/are growing up in an environment with regular social media are going to be better equipped to deal with it than adults who come to it late. It’s why we all used to get those stupid viral emails from our parents/grandparents.
A Deloitte study found that Zoomers were 3x more likely to get scammed online than boomers. Anecdotally every single younger 20s person I know has complained of getting scammed online in the past year or two. I’m not sure the digital natives are actually better equipt
I wonder if they’re being scammed the same ways? I picture younger people being more likely to fall for bitcoin schemes, & older ones for the old “grandma I’m in X country & I’m in trouble, don’t tell Dad because he’ll get mad but could you wire me some money? I’ll pay you back when I get home!”
This is anecdotal again, but I'm hear the same from both. Identity theft and buying scam items. More of the later than the former, but the identity theft is way more brutal.
Wow. And of course all ages fall for romance scams, because we need love. Every couple of weeks a new person texts me and asks if I remember her from that party in Seattle last weekend, and do I still feel that connection we had? If I don’t remember I was under the influence so we should catch up!
Every time media drums up that panic, they link to a bunch of videos that then get a ton of traffic which trains those makers to keep churning out the same content.
The fact that the accusation is always an admission and that altercasting is a common means of ignoring the realities about oneself doesn't change the fact that disinformation on social media is a problem that impacts all generations. No need to point the finger at others.
It's the same panic as those saying transgender folk are "Groomers". Completely ignoring the Church consistently has pedophiles in it, and big think tanks host people like Steven Crowder and Matt Gaetz who both have gone on record saying teens are capable of consent, and should have sex with adults.
Also ignores that Politicians they all love; at least half of them at this point have either allegations about sexual misconduct, or literally have employers who have been charged with sex crimes.
Conversation between two kids (10ish) I overhead last night:
Kid 1: Obama controls everything Biden does. He is really the President.
Kid 2: How do you know that?
Kid 1: My dad told me. And my dad never lies to me.
Kid 2: My dad has lied to me.
Kid 1: He did?
Kid 2: He told me I wasn't adopted.
Genuinely: is there non-anecdotal evidence for this? There's tons of crazy rigorous social science research misinformation and social media, but I don't know of any that compares susceptibility across age cohorts. But this isn't my focus area so I miss 80% of what gets published.
There was a NYT report around 2020 that showed the vast majority of misinformation (something like 91%) was shared by one demographic: baby boomers. I don’t think kids are the problem at all
Yeah I think there's been more rigorous and recent research showing similar stuff. I guess I'm not totally sure if sharing == susceptibility. Though they're probably very correlated. Good point. Thanks.
1. Share to agree.
2. Share to disagree/mock
3. Share to provoke.
Not sure how to quantify that, although a detailed network analysis of the post content and spreads would have been possible before Musk convinced Facebook to scrap the tools that made that work possible.
Haha yeah I had a big project that relied on Twitter scraping where we mapped networks of individuals sharing content on Ukraine and you could usually back-out why people were engaging with a specific tweet based on their broader networks/behavior. Obviously, that project died at Musk's hands.
This is definitely interesting, but I worry a bit about generalizing from the 2016 election for this question. Understandably, lots of the evidence we have now is from that event (ie the awesome Nature papers from Nyhan). That's susceptibility to misinfo on a specific topic.
Thinking anecdotally about the conflict zones I've studied, it definitely appears that young people are spreading most of the misinfo and radical/violence encouraging content, but hard to separate that from their much larger numbers relative to older users.
I had to point out to my Bisexual 22 year old son that he was advocating against ... himself. Because he was on board with "Don't say gay" laws. He didn't know that was what he was repeating.
Yeah, I think there's anecdotal reasons to worry this is true. This is the narrative around the *ndrew *ate. I don't think we have solid evidence though.
We do know that a whole slew of Zoomers became convinced that Helen Keller didn't exist/wasn't disabled in the way she was, so we know that they can be fooled by online nonsense
Adults of a certain age, political leaning, income status, and religion all rely on the certainty of belief. Updating priors is seen as being weak. As a person of a certain age, I see it from peers who see everything from the lens of their age and socio-economic status without empathy.
So true.... scary how many adult friends / acquaintances who I assumed were somewhat intelligent have been semi-radicalised by a stream of social media madness.
The stone cold stupidest and most gullible people I meet are my age (40's) or over. It's never a kid telling me a stupid conspiracy theory. I'm a clerk at 2 places so I hear some good/dumb ones...
I’ve been saying for awhile that the old folks used to make fun of kids who filmed themselves doing crimes and now it’s reversed. The kids learned fast while the adults just keep going. Yeah, black face at the Target? Sounds good! This will really hit on my Facebook
It's also bad rhetoric if you think about it for two seconds. To buy into the idea that social media is turning people trans, you have to forget that there are trans people in their 40s and older who have transitioned since their youth.
i think the data is actually quite iffy on this, recent studies have shown the kids are as susceptible if not more but certainly nobody was talking about banning facebook or war with silicon valley after 2016 when the olds were absolutely swimming in bullshit
The same people I see of FB spreading these TikTok pearl clutching are the people who repeatedly spread the most obvious conspiracy theories and at least one is a Q cult member.
The kids in the videos are trolling and having fun.
The adults are deadly serious and being completely sucked in.
I think the biggest threat to manipulating kids is not TikTok. Never has been. In fact I have seen it as a force for good, helping them coordinate and cooperate.
Does it lie? Absolutely. By so does every other social program (especially Instagram).
No. The biggest threats to kids being manipulated and coerced is the same group that has always been the problem throughout all of history - their parent’s generation.
The kids are evolving and the parents are slowing down/becoming more immovable. And that clash will always be a problem.
A lot of the concern I've seen about TikTok is its (presumed) effect on attention. It's seen as a more extreme YouTube: even more popular, even shorter videos, and even more reliance on an algorithm to decide what you watch.
I gave up on with TikTok. Every comment I made was struck as a violation I had to appeal. Even a simple 100 percent agree comment to a simple smile emoji. Also many others were getting the same thing too.
Friends banned tiktok for their teenage daughters. While I see some of that reasoning, yet partly I'm disappointed because, while needing of critical thinking, tiktok has plenty of high quality content creators (tho one is still affected by the algoritm)
The kids are alright. It’s my older foxnews watching relatives that legit think kids are pooping in litter boxes at school because they identify as furries. 🙄
Kids are definitely not the only or indeed primary problem but my sister who teaches high school history is very concerned about tiktok as a news source. That's just not what it's for.
Yeah, this reeks of how older people used to talk about millennials. I always try to remember that stuff and how ridiculous it was when people are going on about TikTok... Usually young people are the most tuned in of anyone.
Comments
Kid 1: Obama controls everything Biden does. He is really the President.
Kid 2: How do you know that?
Kid 1: My dad told me. And my dad never lies to me.
Kid 2: My dad has lied to me.
Kid 1: He did?
Kid 2: He told me I wasn't adopted.
1. Share to agree.
2. Share to disagree/mock
3. Share to provoke.
Not sure how to quantify that, although a detailed network analysis of the post content and spreads would have been possible before Musk convinced Facebook to scrap the tools that made that work possible.
Have a tendency to be like “did you know ___” and blurt some random thing legit just read. Am so bad about forgetting to fact check…
I had to point out to my Bisexual 22 year old son that he was advocating against ... himself. Because he was on board with "Don't say gay" laws. He didn't know that was what he was repeating.
The same people I see of FB spreading these TikTok pearl clutching are the people who repeatedly spread the most obvious conspiracy theories and at least one is a Q cult member.
The kids in the videos are trolling and having fun.
The adults are deadly serious and being completely sucked in.
Does it lie? Absolutely. By so does every other social program (especially Instagram).
The kids are evolving and the parents are slowing down/becoming more immovable. And that clash will always be a problem.