Opinion: How to pull your family members out of the information rabbit hole

5 days ago 3

Many of us may have friends and family who have fallen down the information rabbit holes of intense partisanship, conspiracy theories or deeper holes of extremism.

With both sides of the political aisle falling victim to these rabbit holes, now is as good of a time as any to help our friends and family.

Our undergraduate and graduate student-led research project, conducted through ASU's Humanities Lab, dived into these rabbit holes to help find the steps to take to address this in your interpersonal life.

Maybe your wild uncle keeps ruining the holidays by bringing up fringe topics. Maybe it's a coworker who doesn't know what else to talk about other than what pops up on their Instagram feed.

Sometimes it's our parents, who became lonely when we left the nest, so they started watching extreme ideological television, listening to AM radio hosts on the media fringes or following Facebook pages that spread information with little to no concrete evidence.

"The family divisions are made worse because of social media," said Keith Hollinger, a professor for the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts who co-teaches the Humanities Lab's Seeking Truth: Misinformation. "You have families that connected on social media for 10 years and then all of a sudden the news is in there, more so than it was before, and now they've actually divided within the family because of that."

These rabbit holes may have caused shifts or breaks in formerly close relationships. Oftentimes, the person who fell into these figurative holes is called a "rabbit."

The term "rabbit" was not chosen in a negative connotation, but rather due to the literary relationship with rabbit holes and the sense of falling down them.

That is where our team of undergraduates and graduates (majoring in journalism, engineering and integrative social sciences) comes into play, as we conducted a deep dive into research approaches you can take in your daily life to pull those closest to you out of these rabbit holes.

You are not alone

Connections with friends and family are important for leading a lively life. Since truthful information has become more difficult to manage, it is important to understand how and why "rabbits" succumb to misleading or false information.

Seeing a family member or friend under the influence of this type of information can be heartbreaking. This problem is not new, nor is it small. Knowing you are not alone in this situation can be the catalyst for reestablishing connections with all relationships.

The research

The team decided to go broader and was able to conduct a systematic review. We reviewed a total of 157 books and articles (both peer-reviewed and journalistic), finding a total of 35 that we were able to code based on solutions.

We did these Boolean searches by accessing the ASU Library databases, Google, Google Scholar and Amazon. We took the results and coded them in Excel to find patterns.

What we found

We have located interpersonal solutions through our research. There is a way to get your wild uncle at Thanksgiving out of his rabbit hole, there is a way to talk to your mother again, and you don't need to cut off your best friend.

With research, we found six characteristics. These traits make up the majority of individuals who fall into the information rabbit holes. Some individuals may only exhibit one trait, but many individuals will exhibit multiple traits.

These traits have been divided into three groups:

The Dunning-Kruger effect and low digital literacy make up what we consider to be group one. This can be further explained through a 2024 study conducted by Rachel X. Peng and Fuyuan Shen in the "Journal of Health Psychology."

"Results provided evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect and metacognitive monitoring errors," Peng and Shen wrote. "Whereby confident individuals were unaware of inadequate health literacy and showed poor misinformation identification."

Cognitive factors are the first part of group two. Things like confirmation bias, hyper-partisanship, childhood exposure and environment can all contribute to mental walls that your rabbit has put up.

Sociological factors also make up the next group. Specifically, the bubbles that we all surround ourselves with. These can be digital echo chambers, television channels that go unchanged or other groups that isolate rabbits from the rest of society.

The last part of group two is loneliness. Our mental states are impacted by isolation, and it can lead to extreme efforts to reach out and find groups that will accept us.

Last but not least is group three: loss of agency. Low levels of control over our own lives can lead to a sense of lost agency.

It can be caused by being in an unhappy relationship; getting a divorce; leaving a religious group (or not leaving); losing a job or other factors that lead us to feel like we don't control our own lives or autonomy.

The steps moving forward

Steps you can take to help pull your rabbit out of their hole are to first understand the type of relationship you have with the rabbit. It may vary from person to person.

Approach the conversation with versatility and flexibility. You can build a rapport and set boundaries for the conversation through open-mindedness. Examples of this may be finding small things to agree about or validating their experiences.

"The idea is to keep asking questions, to keep saying 'Hey, why do you think this?'" said Marie-Louise Paulesc, an associate teaching professor for the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts who co-teaches Seeking Truth: Misinformation with Hollinger. "And understanding their position and approach it from, 'You are still my family, right?' I want to keep the communication channel open."

Next, you can ask probing questions. Asking them to explain their views and experiences will give them a chance to see the logical fallacies in their arguments.

It is dire in these conversations with your rabbit that you avoid arguments and debates. This may come on as an attack rather than a normal conversation. You also do not want to label conversational topics as right or wrong.

Expressing extreme emotions like anger, sadness, annoyance, etc. may cause the conversation to derail and make this attempt to help your rabbit backfire. This may be the hardest step to follow, but it is also one of the most crucial.

This is not a one-and-done type of deal either; more likely than not, it will take more than one conversation to convince the person to expand their views.

Through these steps of communication and understanding, there is hope to bring your rabbit onto the side of reason. All it takes is a push and willingness from you to start the conversation.

Use the research provided, and soon enough, hopefully, your rabbit grows past the hopping and the tail.

Ashley Franz Holzmann, Aryton Temcio, Santiago Barajas and Cameryn Garza contributed to this column.

Editor's note: The opinions presented in this column are the author's and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.

Edited by Senna James, Sophia Braccio and Katrina Michalak.

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Niall RosenbergSports Reporter

Niall is a junior studying sports journalism. This is his first semester with The State Press. He has also worked at WCSN and Blaze Radio.