For some of us, the all-consuming preoccupation with leaving cert exams have given way to other things. Our kids will soon be exposed to new ideas and unfamiliar sources.

Our kids learned that misinformation and disinformation exists, but it didn’t go as far identifying the more subtle (and common) forms of it. I’d appreciate any concrete ideas for what to teach them, and how to make it interesting. In my experience, if the message is in any way long winded I lose their attention.

I’ve drafted something which I’ll put in a comment below. But basically what served me well growing up was learning about how bias emerges in myself (fallacies, emotional reasoning, basic psychology) as well as in the media (journalists with a pattern of chanting for one perspective, absent or misinterpreted sources, history of credibility, “Chinese whispers” on social media, etc).

  • cloudless@piefed.social
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    5 days ago

    I always try to remind my kid:

    • What you see on ads are fake, only showing the best aspect to attract customers
    • Reality TV is mostly fake
    • Your teachers can be wrong sometimes
    • Your parents can be wrong sometimes
    • Use evidence to find the truth
    • There are different ways to achieve the same goal, all could be valid

    It is less of teaching but more of reminding them when I see real-life examples.

    • FarraigePlaisteaċ@lemmy.worldOPM
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      5 days ago

      Very wise and effective advice there:

      • Using ads is a great technique! They see them all the time and whatever you’ve taught them gets constantly reinforced afterwords. Great suggestion!
      • Admitting that we ourselves get it wrong sometimes is really important to help them escape black and white thinking.
      • Being conscious of the idea of evidence itself encourages critical thinking before evaluating conclusions.

      Very, very good advice for parenting young kids. Thank you.