If you think that when a Gen Z person says “Boomers don’t understand computers” it has something to do with the technical aspects of computing and not to do with the ability to distinguish truth from falsity on digital media, then you don’t understand computers.
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Don’t make specious arguments. The ability to discriminate truth from falsehood has nothing to do with either age or technology. People have always been willing to believe bunkum, the technology makes it easier for this particularly pernicious bunkum to spread. Given the vast number of false claims spread online I would wager that everyone gets fooled sometimes.
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She desperately needs a social media detox and to put the phone down for 2-3 weeks. Stepping away from these communities and giving your brain/emotions a chance to rest and reset will do this woman and her family good. Her husband needs to step up and be a partner instead of a coward.
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that’s as much to do with the parameters of the study as anything else
older people do tend to use different social media platforms than younger people, and they tend to share newsy like websites
the kids use tiktok, instagram, twitch. they tend to share memes and videos that exist on those platforms, so those won’t show up as fake news urls
( also, i think right wing groups here and abroad are targeting older americans more directly since they are the ones that vote… but that’s probably an even still different topic )
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This is much close to what a Gen Z person means when they say “Boomers don’t know how to use computers”. While I agree that the parameters of this particular study assume focus on Facebook shares, its also clear that Facebook is the biggest source of disinformation:
These two things are related. It isn’t an accident that the platform favored by older people is also the platform that Russians favored for disseminating fake news in 2016. As you say, this is intentional on the part of the Russians because they are able to get the most bang for their buck on Facebook in terms of people who will vote but also in terms of people who will be successfully disinformed, in large part because the people on Facebook are in a more restrictive media environment. For younger people, reliance on Facebook as the primary social media platform is roughly in the same box as relying on Fox as your primary source of news. It is an indication of credulity and lack of sophistication.
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we actually don’t know what kind of sources influence people the most. the facebook study is important, but i wouldn’t hang my hat on it and call it done.
youtube seems to ( me ) particularly radicalizing, but it’s much harder to quickly hit share.
absolutely. but that doesn’t say whether a group is more or less savvy at using and understanding technology, nor whether some group is more susceptible to falsehoods, nor ( re: youtube ) even whether some group is more affected.
it’s easier to see that the olds are affected: they vote, they run the media empires, they are the politicians, etc.
they also weren’t marching through campus with tiki torches.
and they’re wrong at their own peril. because the newer social media is also awash in fake news, false advertising, and scams. not to mention conspiracy theories and white supremacy
again, it just looks different.
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I don’t know, but it seemed to me there were plenty of people under 50 represented at the Jan 6 insurrection. I get frustrated with some older people I’ve known too sometimes but I’m not sure any of this can really be entirely pinned on a generation, and I strongly suspect that attempting to do so is counterproductive.
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However young you are, you are eventually going to be an old. We will all be “bad at computers”, if we are lucky enough to live that long. (If I’m not already so.)
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Great documentary.
Strangely reminiscent of the lead up to folks I know who got sucked into this mess.
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I don’t think it fits the evidence. If it were a lead issue we should expect it to fall heaviest on people with the heaviest exposure to environmental lead. That would mean poor minority residents of older industrial cities should be the hardest hit. Given that it is a problem that skews almost the opposite direction on a lot of points, I would look for another source.
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Agreed. I know a lot of folks who came from New Age to end up in Q. The idea that it’s all flag waving Maga-hatters is complete bs. It’s so many antivaxx crystal healing youtube reiki master whole foods acolytes. My partner has started listening to the Conspirituality Podcast (bbs won’t let me link for some reason) to try to intervene with his colleagues who think that the vaccine is going to change their DNA
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The point is that some new agers BECAME Maga-hatters. If they are supporting the insurrection and these conspiracy theories which very much position Trump as a messiah-type figure, then yes, they are very much “Maga-Hatters” even if they were not always. Because, you know, it’s a relatively NEW phenomenon in our political history not something that has existed for decades prior to the 2016 election. 
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Is the sharing the part that radicalizes? (Maybe on Twitter?) I took sharing as a metric for who had been radicalized. I would think “the algorithm” does most of the work for many platforms.
In 2016, an internal Facebook study found that 64 percent of people who joined an extremist group on the platform did so only because its algorithm recommended it.
I’m not a big Facebook user, but I feel like it’s easy to see on YouTube.
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That’s because you’re new. It’s a protection for the community. Keep posting, and as long as your messages are on-topic and are informative, funny, and/or heartfelt, you’ll get to the level of being able to include links in your messages.
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Ah, gotcha. Thanks! I’ve actually been a member for over a decade but I keep losing my discord credentials so I have to create a new account and start from scratch. 
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The New-age quackery is clearly the gateway drug in this case. The thing I find telling about ‘new-age’ that it is always such a ridiculous hodge lodge of completely different cultures. If there is a Tibetan buddha statuette you can almost put your money on it that there will be a Native American dream catcher and a hunk of crystal somewhere. In my version of schooling the core subjects would be reading, writing and critical thinking.
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me too
different platforms use different methods of engagement to manipulate users into sticking around. anger and outrage are great ones. they also “just happen” to be great radicalizing influences.
sharing as a metric for determining radicalization isn’t cut and dry. people might share the same news or disinformation for different reasons – it’s humorous, it’s wild and out there, it’s the truth 
.
i’d expect interactions with groups to be a better signal. but i don’t know for sure.
my original point was just that you can’t look at a chart of “fake news shares on facebook” broken down by age group and decide that – look it’s only the old people who share fake news, and it’s only old people “falling for” this stuff.
different sites have different method for keeping engagement. and different sites appeal to different age groups. so a single chart about a single platform just can’t tell the whole story.
what it can show, though, is that facebook sucks.
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I think you’re entirely onto it. The problem is, what does shame require? A community. You need people whose regard you risk losing. Right now, we’ve picked it apart into so many silos that there’s very few people to be ashamed to.
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