jesse social media has become so much more of a force i think than anyone anticipated back when myspace and facebook came onto the scene less than 20 years ago now given what we know about it do you think that social media is more of a force for good or a force for evil i think it's still a force for good if we actively allow it to be right now we see a very caustic audience with a certain age demographic that didn't grow up with these tools being in their pocket every day so they're very comfortable
being on a platform like facebook and just writing garbage in the comment section but if we consider the incoming group of educators who are finishing university who are going into teaching environments where they themselves grew up with social media as a concern for safety or a concern for how they conduct themselves they're better prepared to work with kids who have grown up with these tools as an everyday because they've had ipads and phones aimed at them since since basically the day they were born because that's the society that we've created so there's a whole generation
growing up as you said that have like my son who is 17 who know nothing but the digital age it this is their era social media is almost like a second language are you suggesting that they're not vulnerable then because they're growing up in this and they're so much more self-aware the vulnerability has to run on a spectrum and so the idea of vulnerability when we talk to kids about internet safety has always been about protect yourself from predation currently in canada we see a large amount of seniors people who are in let's say the
55-plus demographic of financial viability being targeted who are falling prey to scams online where it's you know buy gift cards online or somebody who's targeted you for a cra scam and we have a lot of young people who don't fall for that kind of cat fishing mentality because they've understood what it means to fall for something in a gaming environment so their digital literacies their media literacies are more adept to kind of sussing out the garbage and the same applies to their idea of collecting information and kind of going through misinformation well let's talk about
big tech companies i mean you know that what underpins them is enormous wealth and profit built on a lot of the darkness that has happened online right they have used our data to profit hugely where does that leave you in terms of optimism for how things are going to work in the next couple of decades so majority of social media users have this kind of proprietary idea that what they do on the platform is theirs right and so we see people post things on social media pages where it says facebook does not have the right
to use my information but you didn't read the 17 pages of terms of service to actually use that website you didn't understand what you gave up the exchange of information is the currency i want to ask you beyond individuals which is important but to state actors when you have countries such as russia using very sophisticated technologies even artificial intelligence to spread misinformation to spread propaganda and it really does undermine democracy it very much does and the idea that democracy now is twofold the idea that individuals will see something on the internet and believe it to
be true and that's how they go to the voting booth that that's a big concern because if people are voting based on this information that democratic process is severely in jeopardy well and we know that it has happened it will continue to happen it's not stopping it's ramping up i do want those individuals to get good information that isn't based on a person who's sitting in a basement in moscow trying to get somebody to decide who our elected leader should be in canada so within that space yes there is going to be a weaponization for
your vote but it's also weaponization for the way that you see the world and in that it's very easy to get individuals to believe propaganda and we've known that well before the internet existed i mean it's just part of media but the hard part here for the majority of people who are subscribing to this information is that it is affirming pieces of the way that they want to see the world and in that that echo chamber then becomes something that social media amplifies they find like-minded individuals and then those people come out of the woodwork
and kind of come together in a group one person's belief of what's valuable news might be entirely different than others and now the internet just exacerbates that well the internet exacerbates it and certain political actors also exacerbate it right to their own advantage and and the idea that this is whole the russian propaganda model right is that you uh you disrupt and you make people uncertain about what the truth really is but the idea that you could weaponize that and you can get people to chant it at a crowd or that's propaganda in itself we're
seeing that in canada with aspects of politicians who are standing in the house and calling the prime minister a tyrant right there's no evidence to that so according to the oxford dictionary a dictator is a ruler with total power over a country typically one who has obtained control by force there are many canadians that would believe that would hold the view that this does apply to mr trudeau the prime minister of canada but it's a good sound bite and it gets people who have put that individual into space um a little bit more emboldened in
the ability that they can sit in a room and chant something as well correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think we have any real uh way to in a sophisticated way fight back against the stuff that russia is doing no we don't we don't and i i think that can evolve over time when it comes to you can't fool me if i if i'm aware and so luckily our school districts have you know independent curriculum but our provinces really are kicking out more and more digital citizenship curriculum to get this at an earlier
age where they ask questions to young people about what they see online how they perceive those themes but if we have individuals who are emerging into that voting space who are between the ages of 18 and 35 and say no i'm going to do a little bit of homework here before i step in i'm going to understand that the the themes that are in my community and then go further and see what's affecting my country and ask myself when i see something is it factual is there is there information beyond what this one video snippet
if we get people more and more doing that we are going to be on a more optimistic side of the coin and hopefully we become more media literate because of that
