Hello to Everyone and Welcome to Week 6 of my blog!
So today we will be discussing what is referred to as “the grandmother problem” in social media. Interesting name isn’t it? I don’t know about you but it makes me literally think of my grandmother trying to figure out social media platforms and just hitting the “share” button till her heart is content.
Seriously though, could you imagine if your closest friends and family members just shared information at will whether it was real or false? Oh wait, it’s 2019 and I CAN imagine this happening. While this problem can include people of all ages, in my life, this sums up my dad’s take on social media. He has a Facebook which I constantly see fake news being shared or propaganda about medical issues, which unfortunately I cannot seem to find any sources to back the information on. He also has many friends, who happen to be around the same age, and take anything he has shared as truth. This drives me absolutely crazy and I have probably not always gone about informing my dad about the error in doing this in the right way.
I sometimes wonder, however, what is the right way? For my dad, I have now started to get into the habit of having him give me the information that he found on the internet (before sharing with the multitudes) and my sister or I researching the validity. We will show him how to find sources and truly research for the back-up information to make a decision of whether or not he may be onto fake or real news. In order to help him navigate social media sharing, I had to understand that he came from a different generation of trust. He sees something online and he wouldn’t understand why someone would create fake news stories so he trusts what the information is blindly. I consider almost the idea of my parents being able to leave their doors open back in the day without a huge worry of who was walking around in their neighborhood. Myself, I have a door with three locks and a deadbolt with a security system. Times are different and unfortunately, scrutiny of news media must be different in order to ensure we are doing our due diligence in sharing news that is real.
The opinion of older generations being more trusting is not just one that I have either. There are a couple of news outlets such as the American Press Institute and The Guardian that have talked about this “news trust” fake sharing phenomenon in older generations.
Maybe some of the solution to this problem should include classes for less digitally inclined people that teaches them about digital media literacy. I can definitely say that my dad would take a class like that just to be able to understand the internet in general better. Until then, the digitally savvy people must take their friends and loved ones under their wings (just as we would hope someone would do for us) and show them the ropes of sharing real, true, and viable information on digital media.
Thanks for reading and until next week!
