Why you should post on social media when you change your mind

The Pew Research Center just released a new survey that gives me some hope. Turns out 14 percent of Americans have actually changed their mind about an issue because of something they saw on social media.

Of course that means that the vast majority of people remain stuck in their ways, but 14 percent is actually a bigger number than I anticipated.

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This gives me hope because I still make an attempt to engage, in a civil way most of the time, when a troll pops up in my social feeds.

I will make an attempt at logic and fact-based arguing. If it devolves into name calling after that, I’ll just block the person. I have had very little success with changing anyone’s mind, but this study gives me a little hope to keep trying to take the high road.

On the flip side of the coin, it also got me thinking if I have changed my mind about anything because of something I saw.

The answer is yes.

The first one that came to mind for me was the debate about straws. I initially thought that banning plastic straws was among the stupidest ideas I’d ever heard of. After watching several videos of plastics swirling in the ocean on my Facebook feed, I gradually changed my mind. The anti-straw people are right on this one.

Next, I am 80 percent changed on the concept of big internet platforms like WordPress being forced to police their creation. I have always been firmly in the camp that believes that a company like a service provider or one that builds infrastructure on the internet is not responsible for what every user does with their product. In the same way it seems crazy to hold a car company liable if someone decided to drive into a crowd of people. How is an internet company liable for every action of every user?

But now I’m swinging the other way based on many things I’ve seen on social including the plight of the Sandy Hook families. They have spent years fighting to have photos of their dead six year olds taken off of conspiracy websites. If a company like WordPress can just turn it off with a few keystrokes, that seems like the moral thing to do.

My final take away from this study is that I think we should announce on our social media platforms when we change our minds on an issue. If we all started to see posts that said “I use to think this about an issue, and now I’ve evolved to think this,” more people might be open to changing their minds too.

As Abraham Lincoln said, “It is better to be only sometimes right, than at all times wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.”

You can hear “What are we talking about here?” everyday at 4:45 p.m. on 97.3 FM.

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