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.
This is an important point - it’s the difference between emphasizing critical thinking skills vs falling into conspiracy theories, or being privacy-conscious vs being paranoid.
I think starting critical thinking with empathy is incredibly important. E.g. “What’s motivating this person to write this?” Are they trying to get clicks, are they trying to move the needle on an issue, are they meeting their word count quota for the day? Are they just lonely or isolated or scared and lashing out because they can’t find affirmation? Or even, are they paid by a foreign state to post controversial things and stir up dissent in another country because it helps their country economically?
There are many possible motivations, but it’s not going to be a big global conspiracy dedicated to manipulating you personally. Understanding a person’s starting point and motivation helps you critically think through their points and decide what you agree or disagree with.
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”.