Ep 109: Can Your Teen Spot the Truth?

Cindy Otis, author of True or False and former CIA analyst, joins
Andy to discuss how misinformation snowballs (and how to spot
it), the long history of fake news, and how emotion can blind
teens (and adults) to the truth.


Sponsored by Equip: Eating disorder treatment
that works—delivered at home. Visit equip.health/talking for more
information, and a free consultation.


Full show notes


With kids these days having 24/7 access to the internet on a
million different devices, free to browse endless content and
information, it can be frightening to wonder what they might come
across. As a parent, you may worry that your teenager could be
reading some inappropriate Reddit threads or secretly playing
Minecraft until one AM on a school night….


However, there’s a very significant internet force that affects
teens these days, one that parents might not always consider: the
widespread phenomenon of fake news. You might not think your
teenager could encounter dangerous misinformation online, but
fake news is much more common than you might think. A 2018 MIT
study has found that on Twitter, rumors and conspiracy theories
are shared and clicked on almost six times as much as factual
news. How can we teach our teens to avoid these fake news outlets
and ensure they are remaining informed only by the truth?


Our guest today is Cindy Otis, a former CIA analyst and the
author of True or False: a CIA Analysts Guide to Spotting Fake
News. Cindy’s an expert on cyber security and the spread of
information, and she’s here to answer some of your most burning
questions about how fake news might find it’s way into your
teen’s feed.


In our interview today, she outlines some of the book’s most
intriguing concepts, like how fake news manages to appear in the
first place, why so many people seem to believe it, and some
things teens and parents can do to think critically about how
they consume media.


The Origins of Fake News


So how exactly did the concept of fake news come into being? When
did all the misinformation begin? While we might think of fake
news as a recent development, there’s evidence that fake news as
we know it has been around since ancient Egypt! There’s examples
of fake news being used in many societies throughout history to
influence public opinion on political matters.


Cindy brings up an example you might be familiar with: tobacco
companies in the 50s and 60s spreading misinformation about
cigarettes to distract people from their major health effects.
Most of the time, these companies didn’t directly state that
cigarettes are good for you, but instead made the scientific
findings that advised against cigarettes seem murky and
uncertain. By overloading the consumer with contradicting
information, they made the science seem less credible.


In the episode, Cindy talks about how that’s often the case with
fake news. Even if it isn’t necessarily lying to people outright,
it may just be used to obscure or cause the reader to question
factual information. When there is a lot of confusion and chaos
around an issue, people are less likely to believe evidence--like
the science that proves cigarettes cause cancer—-and instead find
themselves uncertain about what to think.


When it comes to fake news in the modern day, social media (where
teens spend an enormous amount of time) is a major factor. One
way fake news is distributed and spread on these sites is through
fake accounts, fake users, comments, likes, etc. Companies and
organizations create this false social media presence to help
emphasize their own ideas and sway the opinions of the public.
Cindy’s research follows this kind of activity closely, and she
delves into this idea further in the interview.


Now that we know how fake news gets around, it’s time to ask: why
do so many people--including, potentially, our teens, seem to
believe it?


Falling for Fake News


It seems as though we’d be able to spot fake news in a heartbeat,
but it’s not as easy as you might imagine. To demonstrate the
progression of a fake news story finding its way to a large
audience and causing panic, Cindy shared a current example about
a story on Twitter. This false conspiracy theory claimed that
there were 6,000 armed protesters coming to a small midwestern
town to destroy property--all 6,000 on one bus, to be exact--and
it went viral.


You might ask yourself, how might anyone believe that 6,000
people might come to their town unprompted to cause destruction?
Cindy explains that the underlying motivation to believe stories
like these is fear. People who may not trust minority groups
might believe that such people want to hurt them, causing them to
accept far-fetched stories like these more easily.


This kind of thinking isn’t just true for outlandish ideas like
these—social media feeds are curated to cater to the user’s own
biases! Websites and companies collect enormous amounts of data
on you and your teen’s activity, and then use that information to
tell you the kind of things you already want to hear. Although
this may not sound bad, organizations may be using you or your
teen’s information to get you to spend money or, of course,
believe fake news.


This tendency of social media to reinforce bias to prop up fake
news is especially common when there is a vacuum of
information--if details are missing, our brains tend to fill in
the blanks with what we think is the truth. Then, when something
comes along that agrees with what we think, we like and share it
on Facebook or Twitter. This half-baked, highly misleading news
is even more likely to stick with us when we’re in highly
emotional states and the world around is rapidly changing, like
during election season or a pandemic.


So when we’re in these chaotic, highly emotional environments,
how do we keep ourselves and our teens from falling prey to fake
news or misleading information?


How to be a Critical Consumer of Media


Cindy and I go into depth about steps you and your teen can take
to be better consumers of all media, including fake news. One
thing we discuss is how all news--both fake and legitimate--might
be manipulating your emotions. While serious subjects can
definitely naturally touch one’s emotions, it’s important to pay
attention to how materials might be attempting to appeal to your
teen’s fears or sympathy to sway their opinions. What pictures
does the outlet choose to use? What kind of highly charged
language might be in place to push you or your teen towards a
certain viewpoint?


In addition, Cindy talks about how important it is to identify
when you or your teen is being micro targeted. Microtargeting is
when a company or organization mines a great deal of data about
the websites a person visits and products or services they enjoy,
and then uses that information to deliver extremely specific
content into their feed. This isn’t necessarily a cruel practice,
but it may be a tool organizations use to spread false
information or to manipulate you as well as your kids.


Cindy and I also chat about the reliability of polls and
statistics teens or parents might read online--and how it’s hard
to find ones that are truly reliable. It’s rare that a poll
reaches a diverse population, and it’s not often that respondents
feel as though they can answer truthfully. Visualizations of poll
results can also be very misleading, and may confuse the viewer
into jumping to the wrong conclusion.