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YouTube is extremely popular with children and adolescents who generally lack developed critical thinking skills and the context to evaluate the claims in these

YouTube is extremely popular with children and adolescents who generally lack developed critical thinking skills and the context to evaluate the claims in these videos.

monksy 8y ago
Our education system needs to teach critical thinking skills and media literacy.
- zeroname 8y ago
  Conspiracy thinking is a form of paranoia, education cannot fix it. Case in point, the moment you start educating about conspiracy theories, you're part of the conspiracy. You can't win.
  - monksy 8y ago
    You're assuming that the idea is so sticky that you can't avoid it if you hear it. If you acknowledge what it is, how it went wrong and the interactions with it go on. You can teach people how to spot it.
    - krapp 8y ago
      >You're assuming that the idea is so sticky that you can't avoid it if you hear it. Often times, it is. Many people who fall into conspiratorial thinking believe themselves to be the victims of elaborate campaigns of propaganda, mind control, gaslighting, etc. Many also reject the mainstream rationales behind arguments against their beliefs as being fallacious or misinformation, and interpret attempts to convince them otherwise as validation of their fears. Such people don't arrive at their beliefs by logical inference, their conspiracies serve an emotional need, similar to belief in cults or extremist religion. It can be comforting to "realize" there are puppetmasters pulling the strings behind the mundane chaos of the world, and that you alone can see the facade. Even if those puppetmasters are malicious, you know they're there, you know there's a plan. Conspiracies are about making sense of a senseless world, and that's why it can be difficult to turn people away from them. No one wants to live a meaningless life in a world of arbitrary and ultimately purposeless cruelty.
- duskwuff 8y ago
  Even if it were easy to add that to school curricula and teach it effectively -- which it isn't -- Youtube reaches a lot of very young children who wouldn't have received that education yet. Many of them are too young to even have the necessary cognitive skills to recognize and appropriately respond to false information.
tengbretson 8y ago
In these puritanical cycles in our culture the characters keep changing, but the script stays the same. "Won't somebody please think of the children?"
- minikites 8y ago
  As an analogy, do you think movie ratings are a bad idea?

YouTube is extremely popular with children and adolescents who generally lack developed critical thinking skills and the context to evaluate the claims in these videos.

monksy 8y ago

Our education system needs to teach critical thinking skills and media literacy.

zeroname 8y ago
Conspiracy thinking is a form of paranoia, education cannot fix it. Case in point, the moment you start educating about conspiracy theories, you're part of the conspiracy. You can't win.
- monksy 8y ago
  You're assuming that the idea is so sticky that you can't avoid it if you hear it. If you acknowledge what it is, how it went wrong and the interactions with it go on. You can teach people how to spot it.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >You're assuming that the idea is so sticky that you can't avoid it if you hear it. Often times, it is. Many people who fall into conspiratorial thinking believe themselves to be the victims of elaborate campaigns of propaganda, mind control, gaslighting, etc. Many also reject the mainstream rationales behind arguments against their beliefs as being fallacious or misinformation, and interpret attempts to convince them otherwise as validation of their fears. Such people don't arrive at their beliefs by logical inference, their conspiracies serve an emotional need, similar to belief in cults or extremist religion. It can be comforting to "realize" there are puppetmasters pulling the strings behind the mundane chaos of the world, and that you alone can see the facade. Even if those puppetmasters are malicious, you know they're there, you know there's a plan. Conspiracies are about making sense of a senseless world, and that's why it can be difficult to turn people away from them. No one wants to live a meaningless life in a world of arbitrary and ultimately purposeless cruelty.
duskwuff 8y ago
Even if it were easy to add that to school curricula and teach it effectively -- which it isn't -- Youtube reaches a lot of very young children who wouldn't have received that education yet. Many of them are too young to even have the necessary cognitive skills to recognize and appropriately respond to false information.

tengbretson 8y ago

In these puritanical cycles in our culture the characters keep changing, but the script stays the same. "Won't somebody please think of the children?"

minikites 8y ago
As an analogy, do you think movie ratings are a bad idea?