I want to call an interview at Politico by Marc Novicoff of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to your attention. In the interview Dr. Haidt blame practically everything, from the election of Donald Trump to rising prevalence of mental illness, particularly among young women, to general societal chaos on social media on smartphones. This passage particularly caught my attention:
A healthy democratic society requires some degree of shared facts and some degree of trust in institutions and some degree of trust in each other. And all of that is declining for many reasons, but one of them is the rise of social media. The social construction of reality turns into a million tiny fragments on social media.
When 9/11 happened, Americans generally came to the conclusion very quickly that al Qaeda had attacked us. But if that happened tomorrow, we would not come to such a conclusion. We’re no longer able to agree on basic facts about what is happening or what happened. Now, none of this is the fault of Gen Z. This is happening to people of all ages. But if you are raised to political consciousness in a fragmented world where you can’t believe anything, where the Russians are messing with us and trying to get us to believe that we can’t believe anything, it’s going to make it tougher to become vibrant, engaged democratic citizens.
How about his own kids?
With your kids, what do you restrict and what do you allow?
I had a firm rule against social media in middle school. And it’s an ongoing negotiation in high school.
I’m not sure what idealized past Haidt comes from, but conspiracy theories on 9/11 were pretty common. In 2009, 42% of Republicans polled thought Barack Obama was not born in the US while 25% of
Democrats thought George W. Bush had something to do with 9/11. (Public Policy Polling, Sept. 23, 2009) People love to think the worst of those they see as the opposition. I think that’s in the wiring.
Whether it’s in the wiring or not I couldn’t tell you. I certainly think it’s characteristic of a partisan press. Fox peddles its conspiracy theories; MSNBC peddles its own.
There is something powerful about ad hominem arguments which must appeal to human necessity to know who to trust. Conspiracies in the American press go back to the election of 1828 if not earlier, though the Jacksonian democracy also gave rise to party newspapers. I think the main issue today is information overload makes it pretty rational to choose who to trust (and by extension who not to trust), even if the reader might maintain some skepticism (this person is mostly right, or this person is right on certain things, not others).
Just looking down the list at other poll questions: ten percent of Republicans thought Obama was the Anti-Christ and eight percent of Democrats thought Bush II was the Anti-Christ. I think Nate Silver discounts these types of poll answers as people expressing mood, either their extreme dislike of someone or at least their amusement at the poll question’s stance.
Agree that the lack of shared facts really hurts. As I have said before I usually cannot find a data source that conservatives will accept unless it comes directly from their own media. All of science, medicine, all international data and all government derived data is a conspiracy against them. To be sure, they will on occasion use those sources if they like what they say.
Maybe even worse, they dont even need any evidence at all for a lot fo what they believe, like Trump winning the election.
Steve
It is a serious problem. Those of us old enough to remember a shared reality can only wonder what genxers must make of the world.
We suffer at the same time from a lack of leadership. Our aging immovable government leaders block the natural progression to new ideas and new leaders.
Russia and China have managed to avoid this problem and they consider it our Achilles heel. They might be right.