The double-edged nature of social media in a crisis
It seems like once a week I get a text or a call from someone I know about something they saw on Facebook or another social media platform. Usually, it is some outlandish claim that just by listening, I can get an idea as to its legitimacy. We should not be surprised. In fact, a May of 2019 study by the Pew Research Center found that 69% of adults use Facebook. Of those, 74% check it once a day, and 43% say they get their news there. There is only one problem with that. Much of what ends up there is junk science or propaganda and some of it is placed there by Russian trolls just to confuse us.
Two outlandish items made their way to me this week. First, the notion that if we wash our hands regularly and shelter in place, once we do go back out, our immune system will be weakened. No! Your immune system has taken a lifetime to build and with a little help from medical and public health science, vaccines have established “herd immunity” whereby many of us can’t get some of the past’s dreaded diseases. You can’t lose that overnight or by washing your hands. But Facebooks said you could.
The next item is one some have called, the “Plandemic”. That somehow some of America’s most dedicated physicians and public health authorities planned the pandemic so they would one day get rich from a cure they will later discover. To use a social media abbreviation; #OMG! Do people really believe this? The short answer is, yes. I don’t know what happened to our ability to critically think or evaluate, but it went out the window with the Internet.
Don’t let the double-edged nature of the Internet or social media cause you harm. There is a way to get news, and information but weigh it so that you have some sense as to what to believe. In science, we use the Internet every day. It is hard to imagine how we would learn to do anything today without the help of Mr. Google. However, not all news is equal and especially what you see posted on Facebook or Twitter. For example, can you look at the actual story someone posts and open the link and see who wrote it? What are their credentials? Where do they work? Does it appear they are university affiliated? Does an e-mail address end with .edu, or .gov? If so, those may be reputable sources. E-mails that end in .com are companies. They may or may not be sources you can trust.
In evaluating information, we often want to hear news that already aligns with what we believe. In science, we call that “confirmation bias.” It’s not a good thing. In fact, we try to limit this in doing science and hope within some degree of certainty, it does not creep into what we are doing. All of us would be better off if we carefully evaluated what was being said or reported online and looked at who was saying it. If it sounds too good to be true, or too outlandish to pass the smell test (i.e. smells like poo), we probably shouldn’t rely on it, much less repost it or share. Better yet, do what you are doing now. Get your news from a newspaper!