Eps 509: How to discuss fake news with teens with Alex Edmans
Episode 506
My guest today is Alex Edmans, and we’re hitting a super important topic this week: how to discuss fake news and social media with our teens.
Alex starts by explaining the difference between Level 1 and Level 2 of Fake News, and I ask what to do (and why) our teens bring up conspiracy theories. I ask Alex how we can nurture adolescents to fine tune their questioning, look for expertise, and teach them to look for peoples’ incentives while they’re consuming social media without making them feel defensive.
Later we talk about sextortion. How can we keep our teens from falling for scams, when their teenage brains are certain they’d never fall for one? Alex ends on a happy, hopeful note and shares an easy strategy to challenge your own confirmation biases.
Guest Description
Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex has a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.
Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.8 million views.
He also wrote May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It
Alex has won 25 teaching awards at Wharton and LBS and was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021.
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Takeaways from the show
- Level 1 fake news (provably false statements) versus Level 2 fake news (factually correct but misleading)
- What to say when our teens bring up conspiracy theories
- Why do people share fake news?
- Teaching teens to be discerning & leverage their own knowledge
- Asking yourself: What is the incentive this person has to post this? Are they an expert?
- Sextortion – anyone can be scammed online
- Teens absolutely must believe they can come to you in an “oh shit” moment
- How discerning are you on your social media?
What does joyful courage mean to you
I’m lucky to get invites from a number of podcasts, and why I’ve said yes to this one was partly because of the name. The name was fantastic! To me, let’s start with the courage, the courage is the courage to speak out. So, if indeed, there’s lots of people who are just believing what’s out there, it’s the courage to speak out about this, not in a reprimanding, sort of telling people off way, but in a joyful way, to try to help people. So the whole idea of joyful courage means speaking out but doing so in a positive way rather than admonishing people.
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