Raising a Nation of Conspiracy Theorists

My two oldest came home the other day and declared that they refuse to get the vaccine. They said it’s untested and can change your body and it’s too soon to get something like this. Apparently one of their school friends showed them some “real news” from a conspiracy theorist on YouTube, and my kids were completely taken in. “Dad,” they said, “you don’t understand. This guy is like really, really accurate about stuff, and is almost always right about everything.” Oh, well in that case. It felt like we were playing out a scene from The Social Dilemma.

Never mind that my wife and I were scheduled to get the vaccine. Clearly, we’re stupid. We don’t even know how the kids are hacking the screen time to consume this crap, so naturally our judgement regarding vaccines is flawed. How do we know that the vaccines aren’t going to mutate our bodies, and probably make us susceptible to government mind-control? Hmm, now that I think of it, we don’t. Maybe I’m getting too old and tired, but I don’t have the energy to worry about such things anymore. Hopefully the kids are right. After dealing with the way life is these days, a little government mind-control sounds sublime.

But these conspiracy theorists the kids are getting their news from is a real cause for concern. My generation — Generation X — knows the stress that comes from growing up with round the clock cable news. But growing up with that and a perpetually buzzing feed of YouTube, TikTok and Instagram reels? Trying to digest all of it must be like drinking water from a fire hose.

My oldest just entered the teenage years and are developing that age-typical mindset we all went through. You know the one I speak of. It’s where you are convinced that Mom and Dad don’t know anything anymore, and that you can figure out how to do life way better than they could have ever imagined. It’s a really, really cute phase, really it is. And who is now there to help facilitate this development of independent thinking, lending credibility to their delusions of grandeur? The internet and social media! Yay! Thanks guys!

What can you do against adversaries like these? What can you possibly do? Easy, you tell yourself at first. I can take their devices! That’ll fix them. But their school insists on them having an iPad to do their studies. OK fine, I’ll put screen time restrictions on their devices to minimize their use. But the kids know how to bypass any and all screen time apps, no matter what the Apple tech wizards say. Ok fine, we’ll let them use it for school, but they need to leave their devices in the kitchen when they come home. That way we know where they are at all times. But they sneak down in the middle of the night to use them, after we’ve gone to sleep. Ok fine, we’ll put them in a lockbox so they can’t access them at night. But they’ve got a hack for that too. Ok fine, screw it. They’re on their own. I’m going to watch Netflix.

Trying to keep the kids protected from the fallacies of social media and the internet is in a word, exhausting. Perhaps all we can do is keep talking to them about truths, let them bumble their way through adolescence, and hope they come out of it kind-of okay, just like we did. At least I think we came out of it okay. I’m sure there’s a YouTube video I could find on the subject. But instead of getting sucked down the rabbit hole, I’ll derive what little satisfaction I can get from this whole experience by venting my frustrations about the internet here… on the internet. Shoot. Which circle of Dante’s hell is this?