The Death of Expertise: Part 2 - Social Media v. People Who Actually Know

Eight days ago, I was casually scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed when I saw for the first time that Hurricane Irma would be a category 6 hurricane.  I teach science, so I know that there is no such thing as a category 6.  Giving my non-sciencey friend the benefit of the doubt, I assume she did not know this.  However, I looked at the source of the article and did not find that it came from NOAA or NASA or the National Weather Center or any kind of remotely believable source.  This is a smart woman who teaches kids about credibility of sources in research, and she is passing along something from a site with no weather credibility (or arguably no credibility on any topic).  Over the course of the next few days, I saw similar articles posted multiple times on both Facebook and Twitter and had people tell it to me in person.  When I told them there was no such thing as a category 6, they would reply with, "Yeah, but it's going to the be the same conditions as if there were."  This doesn't make sense.  It reminds me of when students ask me what UV light WOULD look like IF we could see it.  It just doesn't exist that way, so no.

The internet has the power to connect us to so much information - if we take the time to find it.  Social media has the power to bring us together with a diverse array of people with perspectives from various cultures, beliefs, and political viewpoints - if we only used it that way.  For the first time in the history of the world, we can find out about scientific research from the researcher - if we go past the first page of a Google search.

Sadly, the invention with the power to bring us in contact with a wider variety of people has actually divided us into tribal groups, reading only the articles posted by those we already agree with.  Sadly, the powerful tools we have at our disposal have not led to greater connection with experts.  We passively consume whatever article our Facebook friends post regardless of source.  Chances are, they didn't actually read the article but passed it on based on the headline.

We had already been primed by 24-hour news not to expect experts in our news broadcasts (see last week's post).  Then, we started trusting the wisdom of the crowd.  (To see how well that worked out, we need only look at the ruined reputations of those men accused by Reddit users who thought they could do police-work in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing.)  As we started getting more and more of our news from our phones, we stopped caring where the information came from.  A blogger you follow disagrees with your doctor?  Who do you believe?  Someone posts a meme about a chemical you've never heard of.  Clearly, you can conclude that chemical is dangerous and the people who make it are evil without looking it up. Expert, amateur, and nut are all there, in one place, appearing to have equal value.  

When an actual meteorologist replied to my friend's post about the hurricane, people argued with him.  Later that week, Raleigh's most famous meteorologist, Greg Fishel, had to take time out of his broadcast to address this.  I ask, as I did last week, "Do we really have to slow down for these people?" But even after these experts weighed in, people continued to say to me, "Yeah, but it's the same as what it would be if it did exist."  We live in a "Yeah, but" world because we cannot be bothered to find out if we are getting information from people who actually know what they are talking about.

Teachers, there has never been a more important time to teach your students about credibility of sources.  Teach them the appropriate place for Wikipedia.  Don't allow them to use Answers.whatever.answer.com as sources for research.  Teach them how to tell the difference between a credible source and a non-credible one.  Model wisdom for them by not sharing everything you read on the internet.  When you do share, tell them why you find that source trustworthy.

Why We Should Take Better Pictures

Now that cameras are ubiquitous, so are photos.  Gone are the days when you had to decide if it was worth using the exposure on your roll of film or figure out how many exposures you had left on the roll.  You no longer have to wait to get film developed.  You can now know instantaneously whether or not the picture "came out" and retake it immediately if it didn't.  This should have left us with better pictures, but unfortunately, it hasn't.



This meme absolutely infuriated one of my millennial Facebook friends.  She went on a tirade about how previous generations would have done it if they could have (probably true) and that there was nothing wrong with having fun with her friends this way (certainly true).  She went on and on about the ways prior generations wasted time (yep, got us there too).


She isn't wrong, but neither is the meme.


I have been taking photos as an actual hobby since 1990.  I have taken landscapes, animal photos, architectural photos, and vacation photos.  I teach yearbook, so I take pictures of kids doing work on computers, creating artwork, playing sports, performing in plays, dancing, singing, playing instruments.  I am one of the photographers at a camp during the summer.  I take photographs of kids doing woodworking, crafts, playing games with friends, posing with their counselors, participating in activities, and swimming.  I take about twenty-five thousand pictures every year.

Here are the pictures I don't take.
- Duck Faces - Five years from now, when campers look at the albums we gave them, duck faces will have no meaning.  A picture of themselves conquering a new challenge will.
- Tongue Out Faces - When my students look back on their yearbooks, I doubt that they will believe their tongue was their best feature and really wish that I had captured it.
- Shots of Body Parts You Can Only Take in a Mirror - I know that people who work out are proud of their hard work, but if you have to stand backward in a mirror in your underwear to show it, maybe there's a reason God made it that difficult.
- Selfies - I'm pretty sure even Narcissus would tell us to give it a rest.  He only looked at himself; he didn't force everyone around him to stare into the pool too.

There is a place for silly pictures, and I'm not saying you should have zero.  I am saying mix some meaning into the mix.  I am just asking people to slow down for a second and ask themselves how many identical silly shots are going to want in the future.  I have hundreds of prints in a shoebox in my closet; you have hundreds of thousands of digital photos on your phone or in the cloud.  When I flip through those prints, I'm glad there aren't twenty in a row of the same five people blowing their cheeks out at the camera.  Twenty years from now, when you flip through your photos, you might wish there were fewer of those and more of you actually doing something.  It only takes a second to document something you'll be glad you can remember later.  After all, it's in your pocket for the meaningful stuff just as much as it is for the silly stuff.

My Weirdness - Part 2 - No Cell Phone

Imagine there was a person in your life who insisted you take them with you everywhere you go.  "You won't be safe.  You won't be happy.  You'll be wishing you had me because you will always wonder what funny thing I would have been saying to you if you did.  Your friends won't think you're cool if you don't take me with you."  If that was a person in your life, you would find them controlling and manipulative and would not want them around.  I imagine, "You're not the boss of me" would be said at some point in your relationship.  That person would be a bully.

You let a piece of glass and metal, however, do this to you every day of your life.  It's called your smart phone.  This piece of technology that was designed as a convenience doesn't make your life easier.  It bullies you.
- Every day, it says, "You must take me with you, or you won't be safe."  When students find out that I don't own a cell phone, it is the first thing they bring up.  They say, "What if you have an emergency?"  I remind them that emergencies existed before the invention of the cell phone.  They launch into a stream of what if's questions in an effort to impress upon me how much danger I am in.  I'm not going to say that phones haven't helped people out of dangerous situations, but I have also never walked into traffic while chasing a Pokeball, and I've never had the issue of texting while driving; so I think it's a wash.
- Every day, it says, "You must take me with you, or you won't be happy.  You'll be wishing you had me because you will aways wonder what you are missing out on without me."  I do sometimes watch my students joyfully show each other a funny video, but more often than not, I watch them ignore each other because they are each so engrossed in their phone that they aren't present where they physically are.  When they don't have them, they have so much fear or what they are missing that they are riddled with anxiety.  These are signs of addiction, and we would recommend they seek treatment for that if it were anything but a phone.
- Every day, it says, "Your friends won't think you're cool if you don't take me with you."  This isn't just true of students but adults as well.  It's another way of showing your status to the world, and it is just as obnoxious to show off with the phone you have as it is to show off with the car you drive or the watch you wear.  They are all tools to achieve an end.  Having them in rose gold doesn't actually make them better tools.


As technology advances, we must make choices about our lives.  Accepting everything that comes our way for no other reason than because it is new makes us mindless drones.  Have a philosophy of life, and see if new technologies fit into your philosophy.  Note:  I'm not saying you should see if it fits in with my philosophy but that it should fit with yours if you are going to adopt it.  I have decided that there is too much noise in my world.  By that, I don't just mean sound.  As a teacher, I am bombarded with a constant stream of input from students, parents, other teachers, friends, grade analysis, research, and the internet.  Without a cell phone, I don't carry the noise with me twenty-four hours a day.  I decided some time ago that there needs to be some time in my life between thought and action; there needs to be some time between asking a question and the ability to get an answer.  If I don't have that in my life, my patience will plummet.  I use my computer to look for a lot of information; but because I have to wait until I get back to my computer, it allows for that little bit of lag time I personally need.  Smartphones do not give us time to think and process and reflect wisely before we fire off a tweet or look up an answer.  Therefore, they do not fit within the philosophy I have for myself.  My philosophy of any tool is that it should be used properly and for the convenience of the user.  If the phone rings at my house, I do not answer it if the timing is inconvenient because the ring is a signal, not a command.  People ask me all the time how I live without a cell phone, and my answer is always the same, "A lot more peacefully than you live with yours."

If any technology is determining your philosophy instead of the other way around, it is controlling you.  Take a step back and reflect on whether that is what you want in your life.