Today you start scanning Facebook and there it is. Someone you know has posted a link to an article that makes your heart do a flip-flop.
Instantly you feel like the worst mom/friend/human being ever for not realizing that something you are doing/not doing causes cancer. Or you are seized with the sudden desire to throw out everything in your fridge because it’s apparently made out of yoga mats and hybrid mutant corn. Or you instantly regret your birthing/parenting/educational choices and wonder if you should just go ahead and cash in that 529 right now since your kid is obviously never going to make it into college after you clearly made poorly-informed choices (which you were completely satisfied with only 10 minutes ago).
In reality, regardless of how professionally that blog post or news article is written, or even how credible the website you saw it on might be, very rarely is the content what it seems from the headline. Posts with inflammatory headlines are called “click bait”. Think about headlines like “You’ll Never Eat X Again Once You Hear…” or “X% of Teenagers Do This Horrible Thing” or “X Activity Linked To Children Growing Up To Live Under a Bridge With a Bottle of Wine” (that doesn’t sound too horrible, some days…).
The post is titled something so outrageous, scary, or provocative that you are compelled to click, sometimes even against your better judgment. When you arrive on the actual post and read the content, you may find that it is not as alarming as you thought at all. But the site owner has gained your presence, however briefly, to serve up ads from it’s advertisers.
Here are a few examples. I am not going to actually link to the posts, but I’ll show you what I mean:
Watch Out For This Carcinogen In Your Organic Food – a post about the dangers of carrageenan. It can be made synthetically or from seaweed and is used as a preservative. Yes, it’s good to avoid the synthetic version in large quantities, but you’d have to be consuming quite a lot of this ingredient (AND the synthetic version only) for it to be truly harmful. The post contains good information, but if you just read the title you could freak out and start avoiding a lot of food that is actually good for you.
American Psychiatric Association makes it official: ‘Selfie’ a mental disorder – That picture you just took of you and your child eating ice cream does NOT mean you need to be medicated! This is a situation where you need to consider the source. The source of this “report” was actually a news spoof site, whose “About” section states: “THE ADOBO CHRONICLES is your source of up-to-date, unbelievable news. Everything you read on this site is based on fact, except for the lies.”
Chaos and panic: Deadly floods bring fear over escaped zoo animals – There was indeed some tragic flooding and 12 deaths in Georgia, and included in this flooding was the local zoo. But no one was killed by the escaped animals, and all the zoo animals except one lion and some monkeys are already accounted for. Local residents were told to be cautious until the lion is recovered.
Listen, as moms we don’t exactly need another thing to be worried about, do we? So the next time you see one of those inflammatory or upsetting links in your social media feed, take a few cautionary steps before re-posting.
- If the headline truly alarms you, read the actual post. In its entirety, because the content might be totally different than what you initially feared.
- When there is a study or research cited, “Google it” and go to the source. A lot of times the data is taken out of context. One post that I read was from a series of studies done every year for 5 years. The data from one year was blown way out of context and the summary of the most recent study actually contradicted the blog post I initially read. If I hadn’t gone to the source, I would have had the wrong information. It sounded so legit — backed by a study! But in reality, it wasn’t backed by anything except data manipulation.
So Moms, be careful out there! Maybe it’s time we Google some cute baby videos instead??
