In my last post I discussed “The Grandmother Problem” and steps to help discuss this issue with your loved ones. I decided to put this to the test and tried this out with my aunt.
For a little background, my aunt is a fairly active Facebook user and posts at least a few times a week. She is also a conservative Republican and a lot of her friends agree with her views and also post similar messages on Facebook. For full transparency, my political affiliation is Democrat and I consider myself very liberal. I don’t have a problem with her posting her views/opinions and actual news articles, but she tends to post a lot of false information and often times quite harmful or hateful information as well. I know from my personal experiences with her that she is a kind person, but she also keeps herself in her political bubble and often times that group posts some less than truthful things. I have previously tried to discuss this with her, but I have found it hard to be civil on certain topics.
So I decided to work on following my steps from my previous post to see if they really worked and to figure out what hang-ups, if any, come up during the process.
My Approach
I discussed previously that I think it’s important to communicate in a way that’s kind but also not condescending. This is surprisingly hard, especially when you’re discussing such different views on fundamental issues. I decided that I wanted to approach this exclusively as a misinformation issue rather than a political views issue, as I thought that would keep the conversation civil and that my aunt would be more willing to listen.
Talking to My Aunt
I started the conversation off-line at lunch as I thought that setting might keep things civil because we’re in public. I also decided to do this in-person so she couldn’t just ignore an email or call from me. I waited for a while to bring it up so she didn’t think this is why I asked her to lunch, and I started off by discussing that I know we don’t see eye-to-eye politically but that I noticed a lot of misinformation in the posts she was sharing. I said that I don’t have any issues with her discussing her opinions or views, but that what she was sharing was potentially harmful.
I also asked her a few questions like where did you see it and did you look up the people behind the posts. I didn’t want to overwhelm her or make her feel attacked, so I also discussed some of the stuff I’ve seen from both political parties and how false information was being spread. I also told her I wasn’t trying to call her out, just that I was concerned about fake information going around social media.
She seemed less than willing to accept my help, but I knew this was a possibility so I just tried to again re-state that this wasn’t about politics, but about Facebook being full of fake information. I wanted to appeal to her reason by saying things like, “I know people on the internet may not have the most pure intentions, and sometimes they can post stories that aren’t true to create issues or sway opinions.”
My aunt seemed to understand that, but didn’t think that she was sharing a lot of misinformation online. I asked her if she wanted me to keep an eye out for anything if I see it, and she seemed ok with that.
I changed the subject after that because I wanted to keep things civil and also to help keep the mood light so that she wouldn’t start to feel attacked. Lunch ended well and we went our separate ways.
The Follow-Up
After lunch I decided to give this experiment a cool-off day so it didn’t message my aunt right away despite her posting a few things that were clearly false information. I found a post that my aunt shared that had a meme about climate change with some false information in it. I contacted my aunt privately to let her know that the information was wrong. I sent her a link to Snopes that pointed out this was false, and she responded saying she would look into it.
I guess that’s progress? I left it at that for the day since I didn’t want to overwhelm her, but I think – or at least hope – that my strategy has started to be effective.
Thoughts on The Process
I thought this was a really interesting experiment. I’ve been wanting to discuss this with my aunt for a while, so this post gave me the excuse I’ve been looking for. I have to say this was not easy and I was honestly very nervous to talk about this face-to-face. I think a lot of my anxiety about it was not knowing her reaction and the fear of making her angry. You would think that talking to a family member would be easy and that you shouldn’t worry about being honest with them, but the truth is it’s incredibility difficult to start this process. I don’t know if I would have even done it without this project. Despite my nervousness, I’m glad that I did it and would encourage others to try it themselves.
I don’t know for sure if this discussion and my efforts so far to try and change my aunt’s behavior will be successful, but I think I made just a slight improvement in her thinking. I want to continue to offer her sources to look up information and help her be able to decipher misinformation online. I’m going to call this experiment a temporary small success, and will continue my efforts in the future.
