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?
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I totally see your point with “starting off with empathy”. I think it’s very noble. I don’t think I could do it myself though. At least not 100% of the time. I’ve been metaphorically shat on so many times in so many different ways over the years that it’s difficult to not immediately be suspicious of a lot of things. For example, it’s hard to think critically about where the opinion is coming from/empathize with the writer of an article explaining why a gender-affirming care ban is Good Actually, when you yourself are some form of trans. It’s hard to think critically about an article like that, when you know that 90% of the other people reading said article are reading it at face value and agreeing with it, & not thinking things like ‘where is the basis for this opinion coming from’. My empathy battery is so constantly drained so quickly nowadays that trying to use the empathy thinking ways for every bigoted article I see would cause my brain to explode I think, lol.