Speaker | Timecode | Transcript |
Omer | 00:23:00 | Hi, I'm Dr Omer, Senior Lecturer at the SUSS School of Humanities and Behavioural Sciences. And welcome to the podcast. A friend of mine was recently lamenting about home-based working and learning. |
Omer | 00:36:00 | She mentioned how everyone in her family was so consumed by their own laptops and gadgets to the point that even though they were all in the same house, each of them was consumed in their own little digital universe. This reminded me of the book by MIT Professor Sherry Turkle, called Alone Together. She described how in the age of the Internet, we’re more connected than ever yet even more alone in reality. |
Omer | 01:00:00 | I recall my friend mentioning moments when she could spare time from her own projects and check on her son. He seemed to be looking at pretty normal stuff. But he seemed very eager for her to leave. And she often wondered, what was he reading or watching when no one was looking. |
Omer | 01:15:00 | And with smartphones coming into the mix, there was no way she could watch what he was doing online all the time. I'm looking forward to discussing what these dangers might be with Dr Victor Seah, Deputy Head of Psychology Programme at SUSS School of Humanities and Behavioural Sciences today. Thanks for joining me, Victor. |
Victor | 01:33:00 | Hello Omer. As a parent, I can emphatically agree that there really is no way for parents to monitor everything their children view online. And this is worrying because we're all spending more time on our devices since the pandemic. I don't think my iPads have seen more of me and my family. |
Omer | 01:49:00 | Yeah, I think I know what you mean. I mean, you're not alone in this. I think this is happening everywhere in the world. I'm talking to people across the globe in the US, and people in other parts of Asia, they’re all telling me the same things. It's happening in India, it's happening in China. And let's take a look at what's happening based on some reports. |
Omer | 02:08:00 | So there was a recent article about Channel News Asia, which said that today, primary school children can easily spend up to seven to eight hours a day on the screen. Kids. And in 2010, it was reported in the Health Hub website, that Singaporean youths spend 53% more time playing video games than youths in the US. This is pre-pandemic, imagine that. Yeah. |
Omer | 02:31:00 | But the article that really got me worried was, and I listened to what Neil Basu, the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was saying, he actually said the pandemic is making young people more open to radicalisation. And this is really worrying. |
Victor | 02:47:00 | Well, you mentioned earlier, this increased risk and dangerous influence. What do you mean by that? Could you elaborate a bit more, Omer? |
Omer | 02:53:00 | When we talk about online dangers. I mean, back in the day, I would think he's going to be watching porn or something dangerous like that. But today, that idea of danger has become more fluid. We're talking about rather harmful ideologies, movements. Radicalisation is just one part of it. There are many groups out there who are promoting conspiracy theories. |
Omer | 03:19:00 | Especially, this part really gets me concerned because you see this in gaming cultures: hate speech; it's becoming normalised. Kids these days, when they're in these online communities in those gaming chats. You know, speaking in this kind of violent trash talk, that's normalised You know, when it's normalised seven to eight hours or more of their time, imagine what they're going to bring over to the real world. |
Omer | 03:41:00 | This is really concerning. Now, here’s some other statistics that I actually looked at. It was reported in a CNBC article that QAnon and anti-vaxxer movements, they are actually reaching out to teenagers and more teenagers are actually reading this stuff. |
Omer | 03:57:00 | And it was interesting, because there was a BBC report that mentioned how a lot of these anti-vaxxer movements are involving young teenagers. There was a girl who was roughly around 15 years old, who after getting involved in all these anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, actually took part in many of these demonstrations. This is worrying. |
Victor | 04:20:00 | It is very worrying. And how young, you know, a teenager is being targeted. So what impact are we looking at here? |
Omer | 04:26:00 | When you take a look at the kind of impact that's going to happen in the real world, at the most basic level, I'm thinking about the kind of interpersonal tension that will happen at the family level. Obviously, this is going to create a lot of home tensions and when you get so involved in a certain counterculture, or a little bubble of your own, you pretty much shut out the rest of the world. |
Omer | 04:50:00 | You shut out the people who you used to hang out with. And in fact, everything that you hear or see is sort of clouded with that kind of lens. That's just one part. But when hate speech becomes normalised, I'm trying to think of the kind of communal fault lines that it's going to exacerbate. |
Omer | 05:07:00 | All this is, of course, leading to the rise of harmful counterculture movements that are basically going to be preying on people's fears, frustrations and misguided information and beliefs. And in the time of COVID, this is even more pertinent. |
Victor | 05:23:00 | Yes, that's true. |
Omer | 05:24:00 | So from a psychological perspective, I was thinking we could just drill down, what dangers would we be looking at? |
Victor | 05:30:00 | You're talking about normalisation. And I think that's a really good point there. One danger of spending too much time on dangerous content is really how it affects our perceptions and interpretation. So I provided a commentary to Channel News Asia, about our fascination with video clips of bad driving. One danger of prolonged viewing of such videos is that it leads us to interpret information differently. |
Victor | 05:53:00 | How so? While we become more sensitive to negative information, so in the context of driving, ambiguous situations, which are really all around us when we drive, may be perceived to be more dangerous or aggressive than in reality. So the negative is exaggerated and the positives are ignored. So we start to ignore and disregard acts of graciousness and kindness. |
Victor | 06:14:00 | You talk about normalisation, I think that's another real danger when we are exposed to all these conspiracy theories, it stretches our standards of what is outrageous and ridiculous. Yeah, we might dismiss the dangerous content, we might dismiss the conspiracy theory, but it has already stretched our expectations. So something less ridiculous, because of the contrast effect might be more acceptable now. |
Victor | 06:39:00 | So a mad conspiracy is less mad, maybe even be logical when contrasted against an insane one, right? And you know, you talk about social media, right? So seeing the many likes and supportive comments on social media may also lead us to believe that these theories are not fringe theories; there is a real community, people are liking this. |
Omer | 06:57:00 | Right. So when you see a whole community sort of backing up these ideas, you think, hey, I'm not the only one believing in this. You know, everybody all around me, it must be true, then. I mean, if that's what you're getting at? |
Victor | 07:09:00 | Yes. And so you get consensus and also polarisation. So that's the third danger. I think multiple studies have found that, when we're in groups, it intensifies our initial leanings, right? If you have a group of like-minded anti-vaxxers, and they are talking in a telegram group, that's going to be a massive echo chamber, and they're going to become more and more polarised in their anti-vaccination beliefs. |
Omer | 07:31:00 | I don't know, Victor. This, how do you even get them out of this bubble then? If this kind of negative bias is so internalised, is there a way to sort of slowly wean them away from this? |
Victor | 07:43:00 | Part of this also is thinking about the nature and nurture question. So we've always had all these dark traits and a bias towards negative information. If we weren’t biased towards negative information, we wouldn't be here, right? Our ancestors would have died off, because they weren't sensitive to negative information. |
Victor | 07:58:00 | So we have a bias towards negative information. That's always been the case. But I think the consequential change has been social media as an external force. Our snap reactions, our angry rants, our mindless mumbles; all of this used to be within the confines of our car or our room. Now, there's an endless audience. |
Victor | 08:17:00 | And it's amplified infinitely with social media. So social media has enabled all these echo chambers, where groups double down on their initial beliefs. In the past, they could be the family weirdo. I mean, you know right, but now they're part of a large international community. |
Omer | 08:32:00 | You know Victor, I was just thinking about internet search engines. The way they are designed, the algorithms, they sort of give you exactly what you're looking for. These platforms. I mean, if you're looking for, let's say, cat videos, you're going to get cat videos and more. Right. And it's not only that, if the algorithm actually remembers that this is what you like, gives you more of that. |
Omer | 08:55:00 | And the kind of people in the social network that also like cat videos, yeah, but we're not talking about cat videos here. We're talking about rather dangerous stuff, dangerous ideas. So all you need is basically a teenager who is sort of exploring, let's say, certain dangerous drugs. Eventually, they're getting very creative. They're getting very clever with this. |
Omer | 09:15:00 | They know how to find the somewhat hidden countercultures on the Internet. They’re not that difficult to find. Because the algorithm is actually helping them. So what can we do about this? |
Victor | 09:28:00 | Yeah, it's really tricky because, you know, obviously, these companies have a financial imperative to do this, right? You know, the more time we engage on these platforms, the better for them in some ways. And also, there are some psychological [issues]. I don't know if I'm going to give you a solution, to be honest, but I'll add on to the problem. So one might be confirmation bias. So, we seek out information that supports and confirms our beliefs. |
Victor | 09:51:00 | And when we're confronted, or we ignore competing contradictory information, I think that really adds to the echo chamber. Social media knows. So, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever, they know that you like this stuff. They know that the people around you, or people who like this would also like certain things. |
Victor | 10:08:00 | So as you said, they form a community around it, and the underlying driving psychological principle there, I think one of them is confirmation bias. |