I’m declaring “casual Friday” here at LSNED today, for this post is not really a fact. It is, however, rather interesting (to me) and most importantly you just might learn something, which fulfills my requirements.
For the last couple days I’ve been working at an internet technology trade show booth, giving demonstrations and educating people about a new website. In this booth there are seven accessible computers and laptops with live internet connections. During the day the whole event is flooded with junior and senior high school students and at any given time there were multiple computers being used to check in with Facebook. Obviously, this was not at all in line with the purpose of the booth, so for day two I decided to put a stop to this.
On each laptop, I placed a sticky note that read “FACT: using Facebook may cause lung cancer”. I assumed everybody would read it, giggle, and I could interject with a polite request not to use the computers for that. And so it went for a while. As one group of pre-teen girls had just loaded up Facebook, I stepped up and announced my new fact, tapping on the posted note. One girl turned to me, having gone pale, “Really?!?”
“Yes,” I exclaimed matter-of-factly, and appreciating any variation in a monotonous day, I ran with it. “I can show you the research.” I searched the term “Facebook Lung Cancer” and started reading the resulting page titles in an extremely selective and biased fashion, picking and choosing from the words displayed. “Facebook allied with lung cancer, Lung cancer partnership with Facebook, Causes on facebook”, I stated aloud. (All these words were taken from the pages of cancer related charities, organizations, and support groups)
I went on without flinching, expecting, waiting, hoping for them to interject, calling me out as a buffoon. But they didn’t. They… believed me. “I’m like totally freaked out now”, another girl said, visibly concerned. Through my shock, I tried to say “just kidding”, but I don’t think that message was received. The girls walked away.
I figured it was a random occurrence. Sure, I’m hired to be a persuasive demonstrator, but making people believe nonsense? Would never happen again, right? Sadly, no. Throughout the day I had the chance to do my biased “research” spiel multiple times (which means they at least sort of believed the initial fact) and at least 10 kids appeared to buy it enough to express concern.
Now, kids are smart, computer savvy, and often underestimated but this gross lack of critical thinking shocked me. (nothing against kids, I’m sure I would have fooled many more adults had they any interest in Facebook) Critical thinking, not believing what you’re told, is a fundamentally important life skill. When you hear a statement, you must check it against your own knowledge and logic to see if it computes, and if not seek understanding. Doubt first, ask questions later. It’s healthy to be a skeptic. Unfortunately, I don’t think schools will ever be too excited to encourage students to doubt and second-guess the teachers. Very unfortunate.
All that said, if you’re so addicted to Facebook that you have to check-in during a field trip, you just might have an addictive personality. Enter smoking, enter lung cancer. So I’m not completely off.
- Source: There is no source, because I made the fact up
- Fake research source: You can see the page titles I used as “research” here: http://www.bing.com/search?q=facebook+lung+cancer
- More persuasion: If you like Facebook, and you like real facts, try the LSNED Fan Page for a daily dose of wisdom.
*I want to reiterate, this fact is not true. Not at all true. I’m a big, fat, liar. It’s false. Untrue. Not based on facts of any sort. To clarify… don’t sue me, please.
