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One of the great benefits of growing up in the digital world is that our children have many more opportunities to engage with diverse ideas and viewpoints on any given topic. They can learn and develop a deeper understanding of issues more quickly than we ever did as kids. But their ideas and beliefs will be challenged frequently, unlike our experience growing up in an unplugged world. If we don’t prepare young people to understand how to value and respect multiple, opposing viewpoints, they may forfeit one of their greatest learning opportunities and, worse, treat people who hold opposing viewpoints disrespectfully. In this chapter, we will explore some strategies for teaching our kids to respect multiple viewpoints and create a more inclusive virtual world for themselves and others.
Understanding How Our Brains Work
One of the first steps in helping our kids learn to be inclusive in virtual spaces is helping them understand the cognitive processes that cause people to belittle someone else’s viewpoint or treat them disrespectfully. I’ll illustrate this with a personal example. For years, we had a rule in our house that we couldn’t eat sugary cereals for breakfast. We banned Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes and encouraged healthy cereals like Raisin Bran and Cheerios. Every time I stuck to my guns during a grocery-aisle tantrum over Fruity Pebbles, I felt like a good parent. One day, after giving my wife a hard time for buying a box of Lucky Charms, I happened to look at the nutritional information on the box as it sat next to my granola. To my complete disbelief, the sugar content on both boxes was identical.
Psychology researchers call the moment when we are presented with information that challenges our existing understanding “cognitive dissonance.” These moments are necessary for us to learn and grow, but they are also uncomfortable. In fact, our brains are evolutionarily wired to avoid them because reevaluating our existing beliefs takes a lot of brain power. It’s less work for us to be right than wrong. As such, our brain prioritizes making us feel correct over figuring out whether or not we actually are correct.1 As the graphic on the next page shows, this can cause us to grab on to hunches that align with our existing beliefs over facts that don’t in order to avoid the energy-consuming reevaluation process. This is formally known as certainty bias.2 When we experience cognitive dissonance, our brains first look for a way to reject the conflicting information.
As I stared at the nutritional information on the side of the cereal box, the easiest way forward, cognitively speaking, would have been to reject the new information. I might have told myself that the nutritional facts were incorrect or the process for measuring sugar in cereals was flawed. By doing so, my old way of thinking about cereal could have remained intact with little energy required from my brain. I could have continued my prohibition on sugary cereals and avoided having to tell my wife that I was wrong. On the other hand, if I had chosen to accept the new information, I would have had to admit that my previously held belief about cereal was incorrect—that Frosted Flakes were in fact no more sugary than Raisin Bran. Fortunately, in most circumstances, there is a third path to resolving cognitive dissonance—one that is critically important for us to teach young people if they are to be inclusive members of our digital world. The third path is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the situation that allows us to simultaneously hold on to truth from multiple sources. This is how we gain a deeper understanding of the world around us.
In the case of the cereals, I might have come to understand that sugar is only one indicator of nutritional value. Raisin Bran has much more fiber and whole grain than Frosted Flakes, which means that it is still a healthier choice, even though both are loaded with sugar. Or I might have realized that eating less sugary cereals is still a solid health principle, but that the names of the cereals are not a good indicator of how much sugar they contain. Either way, I would have deepened my understanding because I was able to recognize value from multiple sources of information. This may not sound so hard when we’re talking about cereal, but if the new information challenges one of our core beliefs (who our heroes are, our gender or cultural identity, our national allegiance, and so on), it can be very hard to find the value of an opposing view. The impulse to defend a core belief is so powerful that it can take a huge amount of effort to keep from discrediting and devaluing the source of the information without any consideration. This defense mechanism sidesteps cognitive dissonance, taking away opportunities to learn and, if we’re not careful, can make us less tolerant of those with differing beliefs.
Simply recognizing what is happening and talking about these reactions with our kids can make a huge difference in their ability to be respectful people in virtual spaces. We might look for opportunities to talk with our kids about how they feel when they encounter a viewpoint online that contradicts their own. We can help them understand that seeing value in an alternative viewpoint does not mean having to give up their own viewpoint. We can practice by finding differing viewpoints on a given topic in the news online and discuss what we can learn from each. Another activity might be to call out examples of digital media that have been intentionally designed to make us feel more cognitive dissonance, like making an opposing political view seem even more extreme than it is. By so doing, we recognize a divisive strategy to make opposing viewpoints seem more foreign than they actually are in order to make them easier to reject.
For older kids, an interesting way to help them understand the additional cognitive effort required to value differing viewpoints is to have them take Harvard’s implicit bias test (available online).3 The test is very simple. After entering some basic demographic information about yourself, you answer questions on several topics for which you have inherent bias. Let’s say you are a heterosexual male and choose the sexual orientation bias test. You would see a series of words and icons on the screen and would be asked to sort them as either good or bad. For the first round, words or icons related to homosexuality would be sorted as bad, and words or icons related to being heterosexual would be sorted as good. In the next round, you would see the same items, but this time you would be tasked with labeling all of the words related to homosexuality as good and all of the items related to heterosexuality as bad. The test measures how much longer it takes you, as a heterosexual male, to make the sorting decisions when your inherent bias is associated with good versus bad. The results are surprising to almost everyone who takes the test. Even after taking it several times, I always score lower in labeling something as good if it runs counter to my own demographic. It doesn’t mean that I am homophobic; it just reveals that our brains have to exert more effort to process ideas that differ from our default position.
Increasing our children’s awareness that their natural instincts are working against them when it comes to processing viewpoints that are different from their own can help them become more inclusive digital citizens. This awareness can help them model and increase tolerance and value the varied perspectives shared in our virtual world.
Seeing the Person behind the Belief
A second key strategy for creating inclusive and tolerant digital citizens is to help them recognize that there are real people behind the ideas they encounter online. While the virtual world allows us to engage with more viewpoints, it also allows us to detach a viewpoint from the person generating it. Teaching inclusivity means addressing a double-whammy effect of the nature of our online interactions. The first whammy is that we are shielded from the effects of intolerance online, as we generally do not see the impact of our actions in the same way we would in the physical world.
Shortly after I got my license as a teenager, I was driving home from school. I got to a four-way stop sign and waited my turn to proceed. When it was my turn, a car from the other side of the intersection pulled ahead (out of turn), causing me to have to swerve quickly to avoid an accident. In an act of teenage intolerance, I made a particular hand gesture to communicate my anger. What happened next is something I will never forget. I saw the driver, not the reckless kid I had imagined, but an older man who could have been my grandfather. He had a look of embarrassment on his face because of the mistake he knew he had made. As we passed, he held up his hands and mouthed the words “I’m so sorry.” The impact of seeing his embarrassment juxtaposed with my unkind response was more than I could take. I pulled over to the side of the road and cried. I decided that I would never again use my fingers to respond to someone who was not driving well.
But imagine if I hadn’t ever seen the person in that car or known what his reaction had been. I would never have received the feedback of how inappropriate my response was to his honest mistake. My mental narrative would have led me to believe it was the deliberate act of an irresponsible teenager—none of which was true. Virtual spaces allow us to avoid seeing the results of our actions. A hurtful comment made in the virtual world may be just as wounding as in the physical world, but we don’t witness the damage in the same way. When we can’t see the impact of our digital actions, our empathy decreases. When we are spared from having to deal with the consequences of the things we do and say online, we can easily treat other people poorly without even intending to do so. I’ve often wondered how inclusivity in virtual spaces would change if every time we made a post about someone else on social media, the platform would first show us a preview of that same post as if someone were making it about us. In the absence of such a feature, as parents we must teach our children to develop that skill for themselves. We might ask how they would feel if a post or comment they made was instead written about them by someone else.
Talking to People Who Hate Me
Writer and activist Dylan Marron is the creator of a widely followed YouTube channel dedicated to addressing tough social issues—the kinds of issues that hit right at our core beliefs. He also focuses on helping teach inclusivity in online spaces. His YouTube series “Unboxing” mimics the popular videos in which people unpack material items they’ve purchased to show others what comes in the box. But instead of unboxing a PlayStation or an Instant Pot, Marron metaphorically unpacks tough social issues like white privilege or Islamophobia. Not surprisingly, his videos attract a lot of responses; many are harshly critical of his viewpoints.
Marron told me he used to respond to his detractors by hitting back, making fun of their comments, and so on. But one day, Marron decided to look at the social media pages of his commenters in order to better understand the human behind the vitriol and maybe find a way to give them the benefit of the doubt. This is where the story gets interesting. Marron chose to reach out to some of these criticizers to see if they’d be willing to talk with him by phone. Several of them agreed. (I should point out here that Marron contacted people who were harshly critical but did not appear to present any danger to him.)
During these conversations, Marron learned some important lessons. One was that if you want to create positive change, you have to speak with people who disagree with you, not at them. He also learned that having a meaningful conversation required him first to find a way to empathize with the person on the phone and maybe gain some empathy in return. Marron said that offering empathy is a generous and vulnerable act to make toward someone who has publicly belittled you or your ideas. Empathizing with people with opposing viewpoints doesn’t justify disrespectful comments or assume that either person’s viewpoint will change. Marron shared, “Empathizing with someone you profoundly disagree with does not suddenly compromise your own deeply held beliefs and endorse theirs. It just means that I’m acknowledging the humanity of someone who was raised to think very differently from me.” (You can hear some recordings of his conversations on the Conversations with People Who Hate Me podcast.)
As parents, we don’t have to set up calls with people who disagree with us online to teach our kids how to be tolerant and kind in virtual spaces. But we do have to practice empathy in our families and model the appropriate behavior when we come across posts or digital media that contradict our own views. One way to do this is to practice explaining an issue from someone else’s point of view. We don’t have to agree with them to learn to understand another person’s viewpoint: “While we believe [insert viewpoint here], you can see how someone who had experience of [insert experience here] might feel very differently about this issue.” Alternatively, we can open up the discussion for debate. Ask two members of your family to represent each side of a viewpoint, without allowing name-calling or saying the other is wrong. This can help them think through the opposing position before rushing to judgment.
Diversify Our Digital Diet
The second whammy that we must address in order to teach inclusivity is recognizing that our virtual third places have been designed to reinforce our existing viewpoints. Think back to our conversation about cognitive dissonance. Ideas that challenge previously held notions are stressful. Most virtual shared spaces are funded by ad revenue, meaning the platform providers make money by keeping our eyes on their site (and their ads) for as long as possible. In order to do so, they need to keep us comfortable so we will keep scrolling and clicking. Thus, the platforms we use in the virtual world have been systematically designed to limit cognitive dissonance.
In chapter 1, we met computer programmer-turned-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, who studies the design of social media algorithms. She tells us that the algorithms built into virtual community spaces can easily infer things about us and our family members, including ethnicity, religion, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, and parental separation, just based on the things we click on and “like.” The algorithms may also be able to detect age, gender, and even sexual orientation from our profile pictures. Armed with that information, the platforms can then present as few opposing beliefs as possible so we feel more comfortable continuing to spend time there—this is called the “bubble effect.” And it works with stunning accuracy. Because our social media feeds reinforce our beliefs, we actually begin to feel as if everyone else in the world believes the same way we do. While this reduces cognitive dissonance, if unchecked, it can also make us feel artificially “in the right” all the time.
Tufekci also found that algorithms don’t just show us more of our same beliefs, but more-extreme versions of those beliefs. The next video recommendation will be more extreme than the last. She observed that after watching several videos of a Donald Trump rally, for instance, the subsequent videos were not just more Trump rallies, but more-extreme messages centered around white supremacy. And Tufekci is quick to point out that this is not unique to any one ideology; it’s a design that takes any view on any topic and brings it to the extreme. Tufekci says, “I experimented with nonpolitical topics. The same basic pattern emerged. Videos about vegetarianism led to videos about veganism. Videos about jogging led to videos about running ultramarathons. It seems as if you are never ‘hard core’ enough for YouTube’s recommendation algorithm.”4
In a perfect world, we could control the level of echo provided by our shared virtual spaces through personalized settings. We could choose whether we want only content that reinforces our existing opinions, content that only shows us opposing viewpoints, or a balance somewhere in between. Since it’s unlikely that we will ever have such an option, teaching our kids to be aware of the bubble effect can have a major impact on counteracting it. We can encourage and model the practice of seeking news from a variety of sources that represent a range of viewpoints on a particular issue to counteract the dangerous perception of feeling perpetually in the right.
Focusing on Others Online
When Sanah Jivani was twelve years old, she experienced an unexpected change in her life. One morning, she woke up to find all of her hair lying on her pillow. It had completely fallen out overnight. Later, Jivani learned that she had a hair loss condition called alopecia. I had a chance to talk with Jivani at a Digital Citizenship event in California. She says it’s hard to find words to describe how devastating her experience was for a girl in middle school. “I immediately bought a wig to cover up my insecurity and hurt,” she recalls. The kids at her school were far from supportive—guessing all of the reasons why she was now wearing a wig. She was mortified by comments such as “maybe she’s doing it all so people will finally like her” or “she probably just wants attention.”5
Yet, despite her peers’ hurtful comments, Jivani decided to make a bold move. One day, she removed her wig and shared a video online showing the world that she wasn’t ashamed to be herself. Jivani now considers that to be one of the best days of her life, as she recalls something unexpected that happened. After sharing the video, other kids from around the world saw her brave act and began to open up about their own personal challenges. “We created an online community of hope and support,” recalls Jivani. “Hearing their stories changed my life, and I knew I had to keep sharing my story. I was proud to be myself and felt supported by an amazing digital community.” Jivani says that every young person deserves to be part of an online community of supporters who make them feel safe and included—one that encourages them to be their full selves.
Our well-intentioned attempts to address online dangers have generally focused on protecting the potential victim. Every parent worries about their kid being bullied online. So we teach our kids how to keep themselves safe, but often skip the actions they can take to create a safe environment for others. This approach is, frankly, a bit selfish. Being inclusive online requires taking actions to make sure others feel safe and respected in virtual spaces as well. All the responsibility should not be on the potential victim to stop intolerance. Alert digital citizens know how to switch from being bystanders to upstanders.
In Pittsburgh, a group of kids started a movement with the specific purpose of teaching this lesson. Julia and Amelia, students at the Avonworth Primary Center, approached their teacher with an idea to start a campaign to encourage their peers to be kinder to others. They decided to make shirts with the simple message, “Be The Kind Kid.” With a team of students, Julia and Amelia have now distributed over fifty thousand shirts spreading their simple but powerful message. Being the kind kid online means being quick to invite and include someone who may be left out of a virtual space.
Taking Lessons from the Physical World
As we think about teaching our kids to be inclusive online, perhaps we can draw inspiration from teaching inclusivity in the physical world. It’s true, we have a long way to go when it comes to being tolerant and inclusive in the physical world, as Jivani’s experience shows. There are still far too many examples where exclusion and intolerance go unchecked, for both kids and adults. Yet even with many gaps to close, teaching tolerance in the physical world has at least become baked into the process of growing up. If you are the parent of more than one child, teaching this concept likely consumes a large portion of your parenting life. Learning not to exclude a brother or fight with a sister is one of the first life lessons that we teach. Kindergarten teachers are masterful at this; the classroom is often one of the first places where children participate in a shared physical space outside their family. Kindergarten teachers are adept at turning every “he-stole-the-blue-crayon-from-me-so-I-punched-him” moment into a learning opportunity. “Hitting your classmate is not how we solve problems. Let’s practice asking if we can take a turn …” They read stories like Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches and describe how everyone loses when we exclude people. Yes, there is a reason for those “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten” posters.
As children get older, other activities kick in. We read books like To Kill a Mockingbird or The Sun Is Also a Star in English class. Many schools offer Model Legislature or debate clubs, designed specifically to teach young people how to disagree with another person’s position without making personal attacks. In a debate club, there is a good chance you won’t even agree with the position you’ve been asked to take. Earlier in this book, we talked about the concept of sign-posting (reminding people of good social behaviors through messages posted in public places). We sign-post around inclusivity in physical spaces all the time. Schools have signs that remind people “Everyone Is Welcome Here” or “Be a Hero: Be Kind.” Perhaps these activities can give us ideas for developing systemic approaches for practicing inclusivity in the virtual world as well.
Practicing Inclusivity in Virtual Spaces
As we try to bring the same level of attention to modeling inclusive practices into our digital world, we should start by making sure our kids are actively practicing being good cyberfriends, including talking through how they might respond in situations when someone else is being treated unkindly in a virtual space. Even if our kids are not committing acts of intolerance themselves, if they are witnessing acts of intolerance and choose to do nothing, they are complicit. We might think that in an online environment with many more people available to intervene, someone would more likely stand up for a person who is being treated unfairly. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. The virtual world is particularly prone to the bystander effect, which occurs when multiple people observe a problem and nobody takes action because they all assume someone else will. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, when it appears that nobody is acting, we assume that it must be appropriate not to act as well. Ninety-five percent of teens who have witnessed cruel behavior on social networking sites say they also have witnessed others ignoring the behavior.6 We can challenge our kids to look for opportunities to stand up for someone who is being treated unkindly online and celebrate them when they have the courage to do so.
As parents, we should openly share examples when we’ve advocated for someone ourselves. We can also share examples of how we respectfully offered differing viewpoints to opinions shared online. And we should point out when we see political leaders or celebrities using their digital media presence in a disrespectful way, regardless of whether or not we agree with their position. According to Sanah Jivani, it is imperative that, as families, we actively talk about how we can create inclusive and accepting online communities.
Hate Is Contagious—but So Is Kindness
We hear so many examples of the escalating divisiveness and anger that exist in virtual spaces. It feels as if animosity is contagious. But the good news is that kindness is contagious, too. I’m often surprised by how little effort it takes to turn unkindness around, even in virtual spaces where the more nuanced forms of communication, such as tone of voice and body language, are missing. Most acts of intolerance stop as soon as a bystander intervenes on behalf of someone who is being disrespected.7 When Kristen Layne wanted to buy a new prom dress, she decided to get the money she needed by selling her old prom dress online. She posted a picture of herself wearing the dress to GoFundMe for people to bid on. Unfortunately, some of the responses were cruel, pointing out her weight and making fun of her appearance. With great restraint, she responded by bravely saying, “Can you please stop with the comments? Sorry that I’m not pleasing to your eye.” But unfortunately the taunting didn’t stop; it got worse. If I stopped the story here, you might guess how it would end, perhaps with yet another case of someone getting bullied to the point of taking their own life.
Only it didn’t. Not long after the hateful comments began, one person decided to move from being a bystander to an upstander, actively creating a more inclusive virtual world by posting that she thought Layne looked “stunning” and “beautiful on the inside and out.” Others then followed and began flooding the comments section with uplifting messages of encouragement. Layne said the uplifting comments made her feel better about herself and realize she was not alone. In what became a community effort to stand up to digital intolerance, hundreds of people began flooding Layne’s page with kind comments. She ended up receiving over $5,000 in donations to buy her new dress, much of which she used to help other students who weren’t able to afford their own dresses.8
By moving from being bystanders to active advocates, our children can become ambassadors for a more inclusive digital world. While our physical world is still largely segregated based on where we live, our digital world brings an opportunity for cross-pollination of urban and suburban, poor and wealthy, east and west, sick and well, vegan and cattle rancher, millennial and boomer, socialist and libertarian, Yankees fan and Red Sox fan. These diverse connections exponentially increase the number of times our brains confront ideas that challenge our existing views. If we quickly reject new ideas—and the people who present them—we are reinforcing our certainty bias. Yet when we can become comfortable with and try to understand a differing viewpoint, we are in a position to do some of our most important learning.
We aren’t teaching our children to include others only because it’s a nice thing to do. We are teaching them that their knowledge is limited and that one of the best ways they can fill the gaps in their understanding is by learning from others whose experiences and perspectives differ from their own. As a result, our tiny corner of the internet can becomes a place where people with differing ideologies can be respected and included.
Next Steps
Action Items
· Learn more about how our brains react to new information (consider reading What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite by David DiSalvo), and share your learning with your children.
· Follow a group on Facebook, Instagram, or other social platform that promotes civil but contrasting beliefs from yours, or sign up for an e-newsletter from a trusted news organization that supports views different from your own.
· If you have older kids, take the Harvard implicit bias test together and discuss the results.
· Invite a friend who has an opposing viewpoint to explain their position to you. Listen and ask clarifying questions without debating. Talk with your children about your experience and encourage them to find a similar opportunity to listen.
· Look for examples of bias or assumptions online (they’re everywhere) and point them out to your kids.
· Practice having different members of your family respectfully debate different sides of an issue.
Conversation Starters
· Why is it important to hear viewpoints from people who think differently than you?
· What would happen if nobody ever challenged your beliefs?
· Can you think of something you’ve learned from someone who disagreed with you?
· Have you ever regretted something you’ve written or said online?
· Have you ever seen someone you respect do or say something online that disappointed you?
· Why do you think it’s easier to be unkind to someone online than in person?
· Have you ever felt excluded or rejected online?
· How can you make sure others feel included in your online groups?
· What should you do if you’re participating in an online group where someone is being made fun of or picked on?