This is the third part in a series on social media.
What would you say if someone told you birds are government drones?
“A lot of things that people believe on social media are so unreal they can’t help but think it’s true. So it either has to be so out of this world that it has to be believable, or it has to be a minor lie that can be stretched out,” said Angola High School student Tori Brown.
Twenty-year-old University of Arkansas student Peter McIndoe started “birds aren’t real” by standing with a sign during a Jan. 17, 2017 Women’s March in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. He yelled: “Birds are a myth, they’re illusions, they’re a lie. Wake up, America, wake up!”
An internet and social media craze ensued.
On its face, the birds aren’t real movement is ridiculous but it has been built for the minds of today’s young people.
It “makes you think ... makes you want to believe it,” said Angola High School student Brennen Doolittle.
The home page for the birds aren’t real web site shows unamused teens holding signs. The fanciful history of the movement spans 70 years of government surveillance. Through a silly juxtaposition of American history with a fanciful plot about birds being replaced with high-tech spyware, it warns readers to be aware the government could be monitoring people in insidious ways.
“Google, Facebook and Instagram are independent platforms being used by the government to track and compile data from the billions of drone birds cruising the skies all across America,” says the history.
DeKalb High School art teacher Jessica Minnich said sources teens follow on social media affect their beliefs.
“I don’t know if they know how to find the ‘right source,’” Minnich said. “A lot of times they have so many things bombarding them on their social media that it is not always true or factual.”
In the documentary “The Social Dilemma,” a former Twitter executive said fake news travels faster on Twitter than real information.
“Such as a lot of celebrity deaths,” said Brown. “Most of them are fake, such as the hoax of comedian Gabriel ‘Fluffy’ Iglesias. People were posting that he had died of a heart attack when he is very much alive and well.”
Teenagers will let the things they see on social media influence them without fact checking, said DeKalb High School science teacher and coach Melissa Hall. To exacerbate the situation, she said, social media sites track individuals’ activity, “feeding them ads and information they believe they want to see.”
Impact Institute interactive media instructor Jeannette Rinard said young people have difficulty distinguishing the truth from propaganda.
“Thanks to the algorithms that supply users with story after story with similar messages from similar angles, it leads people — young and old — to the belief that this particular story bend is the ultimate truth,” said Rinard. “I think it also makes it harder to get some to even consider other perspectives of that story. Why should I consider contrasting ‘facts’ when I’ve seen so many articles declaring my version of the fact to be truth?”
Abby Bainbridge, graduating this month from Indiana University with a degree in journalism, said social media can create “echo chambers” that tell people what they want to hear. It can divide people based on their beliefs or their political leanings. An example is the recent promotion of social media site Parler for people with right-wing points of view.
Millions of people have migrated away from Facebook and Twitter since the presidential election, said a Nov. 11 New York Times article.
“As the companies have clamped down on misinformation, they have clashed with Republicans and conservatives who have spread lies about the election’s outcome, leading to claims that the tech platforms are censoring them,” says the article, which provides statistics showing Parler’s membership doubled from 4.5 million to 8 million in the week after the election.
When conversations and personalities on a social media platform are narrowly focused, that is an echo chamber, said Bainbridge.
“The way that social media has made this all the more dangerous is because instead of having to face the variety of people found in their relationship life community — who might demonstrate to them that what they’re saying doesn’t make any sense — they can just go back to their safe, warm, online community who will continue to reaffirm their beliefs,” said Bainbridge.
Social media is not going away any time soon. It has become an integral way to connect with friends and family and follow role models like celebrities. Although we should be able to tell the difference between real and fake, social media tends to pull us away from those internal feelings and makes us question ourselves. Just remember that not everything you read on social media is true.
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December 20, 2020 at 12:00PM
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