MindShift to a Better Place by Mindshift Foundation

Author:Mindshift Foundation
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC Books
Published: 2019-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

Vulnerability in the digital world

For those people who trust easily, the digital world can be a minefield. The internet might be easy to use, but the digital world can be complex and confusing. It’s getting harder and harder to know what’s real and what’s fake. Everything may seem to be played for drama, and we might find ourselves reading a status or a post on social media, or a news report and wonder, ‘Is this the truth?’

Breaking down the manipulations of the digital world is near impossible. However, we can divide it into three different categories: manipulation through social media, manipulation through news media and online scams. We saw the earlier research that listed fake news as a big factor in distrusting what we read online.

If you’re an honest person, you may want to believe what others share online. But if you’re a cynic, you may assume that everything you read is an exaggeration or a lie. Trusting people can find social media and other internet platforms a minefield of manipulation. In fact, the worst part about manipulation in the digital world is that it’s contagious. We mentioned in chapter 3 that social media can obscure how we see reality through the filter of Instagram or Facebook. What happens is we start to reflect the language and visuals we see around us, instead of creating content that is authentic, honest and true to who we are. We start to post images that play into something that we don’t necessarily feel, in order to hide the everyday reality of life.

Not everyone plays this game. In February 2019, TV personality Carrie Bickmore received widespread praise for a post that exposed how far from reality Instagram photos can be, in this case, posts about motherhood. Carrie posted an artfully pretty image of herself napping with her newborn daughter, Adelaide. It showed both new mum and baby to their best advantage. However, beside this, she posted a second photo, which showed her splay-legged on the couch with no artful props, weary to the point of unconsciousness. Just a mum and her daughter, completely exhausted.136

Manipulative social media posts play on our emotions. These posts try to make us want or desire something, leading to comparison envy, or they will use pity or sympathy to their advantage. Here are a few types of manipulative posts that you might recognise from your social media browsing.

•Playing on emotion. This is the post that hints at drama but doesn’t explain it. It asks us to interact and say, ‘What’s wrong?’ It’s not the type of post that says we’ve had a bad day because of A, B and C. It’s the post that says, ‘I’m tired of it all and sick of his rubbish.’ That post could be about a partner or the destructive antics of a pet dog. We don’t know until we’ve asked, which can then lead to us getting caught in someone else’s drama.

•Posts to stay friends. This is the post from someone that says they are cleaning up their friends list and that you need to comment on it to stay friends.

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