Youth online too ready to follow ideas blindly, journalism professor says
Social media makes manipulation easy as young adults lose critical thinking skills, she warns
Young people's herd-like tendency to follow social or political groups online leaves them open to mindset manipulation, a journalism professor has warned.
Many young adults have lost the ability to think independently through their over-reliance on social media such as Facebook, Alice Lee Yuet-lin said at a recent seminar.
"Young people nowadays are prone to influence from a particular set of social or political groups, as they tend to follow like-minded people on social media sites and therefore fail to expose themselves to alternative views," Lee said.
Lee, an associate professor in the journalism department at Baptist University, was speaking at a symposium on the use of the internet by today's youth.
"Facebook can totally manipulate your emotions and knowledge structure by allowing you to view only messages and posts of a certain nature," she said. "Besides being a means of communication and a source of news it is a tool for others to monitor, and to a greater extent, indoctrinate" political views.
Lee, vice-chairwoman of the Association of Media Education, said that because of this herd mentality, many young internet users lacked a critical mindset to withstand influence from social and political groups, especially in a polarised society where views on different issues were divided.
