Finding Truth in an Era of Fake News
Jason Koon
Day 1 of 5: The Echo Chamber
Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end, you will be counted among the wise. Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge. –Proverbs 19:20 & 27 (NIV)
Recently, I made the mistake of jumping on Twitter for a moment while waiting in line at Starbucks. For the next three days, every app on my phone lit up with a barrage of advertisements for delicious-looking six-dollar Starbucks beverages. Another recent search of a particular book I needed for a class led to a week of book advertisements from Amazon and Thriftbooks. And even though Facebook would deny the blame, my feed was once filled with posts from local restaurants after only a conversation with a friend about where to go for lunch while I browsed the app.
We all know Social Media algorithms are hyper-targeting us in continuously more intrusive ways. Data about our location, preferences, political and religious leanings, as well as past posts and advertisements we have interacted with is collected and run through complex algorithms to provide us with “a better user experience.” In other words, Social Media figures us out so it can show us more of the content we want to see and less of the stuff we’ll just scroll past. Researchers have studied how this hyper-targeted marketing impacts advertisement effectiveness and consumer behavior; some have even begun looking at its effects on the brain, but most of us have never considered what all this is doing to our souls.
One of the most profound effects our digital lives are having on us is the echo-chamber phenomenon. In the echo-chamber, everything I see echoes what I already believe. I can jump on social media or check my preferred news outlets without ever having to interact with people or points of view I don’t want to deal with. Add in the constant barrage of “fake news” accusations coming from every direction, and I don’t have to believe anything I don’t want to believe anymore. If I run across something I don’t like, I just shout “fake news,” block it and sink back into my individually tailored digital world.
Christian Scripture and Church history, along with countless other religious and wisdom traditions, warn against this kind of individualism. The book of Proverbs cautions that those who stop listening to correction will wander away from wisdom, but how can I listen to correction if I don’t even see it anymore?
I often wonder what the writer of Proverbs would have thought if they could have peered into our world of hyper-targeted marketing, buffet-style news, and constant “fake news” accusations. I imagine they would have seen it as a spiritual minefield.
So how do we navigate this minefield? How do we find truth while practicing empathy and understanding for those who see the world differently than we do? These are the questions we must explore if we are going to navigate this digital spiritual minefield.
Consider the following questions: - On a scale from one to five, how much do you think your digital life has impacted your way of thinking? - What is one thing you can do to keep yourself connected to the “real world” in this age of digital living? - What is one concrete step you can take to open yourself up to people and points of view that are different than yours?
Jason Koon