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As our population ages, the effects of technology and the pace of change in technology continues to grow. The result? We are becoming a nation of suckers, getting conned online by various predators.
It's generally accepted that the rate of technological change grows exponentially. Which means that people born around 1950 grew up in a much more stable world than the people born eighteen years ago. While adoption of smart phones and other devices has gone up among seniors, the percentage of "digitally ready" seniors is very low. This isn't just an inability to find the right button to push, this is a fundamental lack of understand of how the internet works and who it's working for. For example, about one third of seniors think that Facebook news articles are being vetted by journalists and facebook staff, rather than realizing that it's being driven by an algorithm (link).
Meanwhile our population is getting older. By 2030, 1 in every 5 Americans will be over 65 and they will outnumber children for the first time in US history.
So what do we have? An increasing amount of people unprepared for the rapid change taking place on the internet participating in it with limited awareness and a lot of time on their hands. Due to the fact that older people tend to be more conservative, the political ramifications has shown up most significantly and earlier in conservative politics.
Various political PAC's are scamming them out of their money:
Seniors were disproportionately affected by fake news, and I see no reason why this trend will reverse or get better. Don't believe a scientific publication? How about an admitted fake news publisher?
TLDR: our population is getting increasingly participating in world that they don't understand and becoming increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Overall, this is affecting our politics for the worse, either by misappropriating hard earned money or influencing decisions with highly targeted, manipulative information.
I don't have a solution for this, but at the very least, we need to recognize we have a problem.
It's generally accepted that the rate of technological change grows exponentially. Which means that people born around 1950 grew up in a much more stable world than the people born eighteen years ago. While adoption of smart phones and other devices has gone up among seniors, the percentage of "digitally ready" seniors is very low. This isn't just an inability to find the right button to push, this is a fundamental lack of understand of how the internet works and who it's working for. For example, about one third of seniors think that Facebook news articles are being vetted by journalists and facebook staff, rather than realizing that it's being driven by an algorithm (link).
Meanwhile our population is getting older. By 2030, 1 in every 5 Americans will be over 65 and they will outnumber children for the first time in US history.
So what do we have? An increasing amount of people unprepared for the rapid change taking place on the internet participating in it with limited awareness and a lot of time on their hands. Due to the fact that older people tend to be more conservative, the political ramifications has shown up most significantly and earlier in conservative politics.
Various political PAC's are scamming them out of their money:
Granted, "little old ladies" is a patronizing description, but I wanted to post a link from well known conservative outlet just to make it clear that this is not a liberal/conservative issue. This is a generational issue and the split along partisan lines is just a function of demographics. (And if you were a conservative giving to these PAC's, you should mad as hell about the way your money was spent)Why is the conservative movement not as effective as its supporters want it to be? Because day after day, year after year, little old ladies get called on the phone or emailed or sent letters in the mail telling them that the future of the country is at stake and that if they don't make a donation to groups that might as well be named Make Telemarketers Wealthy Again right now, the country will go to hell in a handbasket. Those little old ladies get out their checkbooks and give what they can spare, convinced that they're making a difference and helping make the world a better place. What they're doing is ensuring that the guys running these PACs can enjoy a more luxurious lifestyle.
...
The PACs propagate a narrative in which they're the heroic crusaders for conservative values, secure borders and freedom, up against corrupt establishment elites . . . when they're in fact run by those coastal political operatives and keeping most of the money for their own operations.
The Right's Grifter Problem - National Review
Seniors were disproportionately affected by fake news, and I see no reason why this trend will reverse or get better. Don't believe a scientific publication? How about an admitted fake news publisher?
Jestin Coler, who ran a network of websites that published completely false material about a, politics, and other topics, told BuzzFeed News that baby boomers were a key demographic for his sites because they are absolutely more likely to share and consume fake news online, particularly on Facebook.�
"We did target older age groups when running ads, and I'm sure you will find the same with hyperpartisan publishers," he said.
Old, Online, And Fed On Lies: How An Aging Population Will Reshape The Internet
TLDR: our population is getting increasingly participating in world that they don't understand and becoming increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Overall, this is affecting our politics for the worse, either by misappropriating hard earned money or influencing decisions with highly targeted, manipulative information.
I don't have a solution for this, but at the very least, we need to recognize we have a problem.