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It's not a gender thing. Young people in general are vulnerable to all kinds of negative groupthink because they don't have a fully formed identity, experience,
by api 8y ago
It's not a gender thing. Young people in general are vulnerable to all kinds of negative groupthink because they don't have a fully formed identity, experience, or adult critical thinking skills. The nature of the toxic material seems to differ a bit by gender.
Loads of teen boys are sucked into toxic online cults too including neo-Naziism, extreme misogyny, other kinds of toxic political radicalism, gaming addiction, self-help cults, etc.
- ASalazarMX 8y agoI think you hit the nail in the head. Kids (and many grownups) are very vulnerable to groupthink, The only solution I see is encouraging common sense through critical thinking.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y agoConsidering most of these groups rally around conspiracy theories, which by definition start from a position of questioning commonly accepted facts (i. e. "critical thinking"), maybe we have actually gone too far with the critical thinking?
- api 8y agoWe teach the idea of critical thinking but not the intellectual disciplines of doing it honestly and effectively.
- ASalazarMX 8y agoIt could be taught in schools, but it has to be taught at home too, by example. I wonder if enough parents would be willing to let their kids question something as basic as their religion and indoctrination?
- ASalazarMX 8y ago> maybe we have actually gone too far with the critical thinking? No, because it would be something else than critical thinking. It's like the scientific method, where you can't dismiss any possibility, unlikely as it be, but pursue the most likely explanations first. Conspiracy theories bizarrely pursue the least likely explanation. Granted, this explanation might be real, but until new data arrives (Assange, Snowden, Manning, etc.) it can't outweigh the simpler ones.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y agoI love how your comment is being downvoted for the heresy of suggesting there is something wrong with neo-nazis or /r/incels.
- api 8y ago4chan is a cult with a lot of traction among mostly male technical types. There are lots of online cults though, not just on the chans. Tumblr is particularly bad. Lots of little Borg minds looking to assimilate young novelty.
- tedsanders 8y agoThere is evidence that it's gendered. One example is that hospital admissions for self-harm are higher for girls than boys. It's also going up for girls and not going up for boys. See figures 1 and 2 of: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2664031?appId=scweb https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26640...
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y agoCheck the statistics of hospital admissions for being harmed by others, check the perpetrators, and you'll find the boys missing from your statistic.
- tedsanders 8y agoI couldn't find those stats - could you please share your source with us? I was able to find stats on violent crime by youth (mostly boys), and unlike self harm by girls, the rates of serious violent crime have been trending down for years. https://www.statista.com/statistics/477466/number-of-serious-violent-crimes-by-youth-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/477466/number-of-serious... In any case, there is a clear gendered difference in the average behavior of girls and boys.
- ConceptJunkie 8y agoAnd groupthink is orders of magnitude more powerful in the era of social media.