STORY: victim of MIS-INFO
One example of someone I believe is significantly infected by the consumption of misinformation is my older sister. A couple years ago she was a victim of believing misinformation, specifically about misleading/incorrect statistics showing the city she lived in as the top rated city for human trafficking.
To give you some background: we were born in Texas and both moved to Arizona for college. Since graduation she has been living alone in a condo near the bar she works at. During her first year of living alone, she struggled with anxiety. Research has shown us that people living alone reported having higher levels of anxiety than those in multi-person housing, so this seemed pretty normal for her to experience anxiety. I even found that anxiety levels are the highest in her age group, 18-29. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey shows living alone has a higher impact on the mental health of younger adults than older adults.
Further, as a 24 year old living alone, she is in the top age group for adults living alone with high anxiety levels.
That is a statement I can backup with credible sources and truth. My sources are valid and reliable, and I even included a data visualization above!
The information she read back in 2018 stated that Scottsdale, Arizona was the top city in the United States for human trafficking. At the time, i believe her preexisting anxiety about living alone allowed her to demonstrate confirmation bias, when someone is perceiving something as truth or credible because it aligns with your current beliefs or thoughts. This is a great example of why we need to spread awareness on the implementation of false or misleading statistics, mis and disinformation, and media literacy in general. My sister had this extreme and specific fear that she were more likely to be human trafficked than anybody else because of this misinformation. I watched her obsess over locking windows, doors, sprint in parking lots to get to the car, and believe we are being followed everywhere we go. Obviously this is nothing extreme… it is better to be over-cautious than reckless, but this is one example of misinformation damage that I will never forget! While it is healthy to be smart and always move cautious and aware, the creation of this misinformation ultimately had a negative and significant impact on my sister’s lifestyle.
Maybe if she didn’t have had preconceived fears about being harmed , she would have at least tried to fact check the post or check the publishers credibility before processing the information instead. It took me about 3 seconds to google search the top rated cities for human traffickers and NONE of the top cities were even in the state of Arizona! I remember trying to show her alternative credible sources when she first saw the misinformation, but she was so consumed in believing it that she did not pay attention.
That leads me to the questions, what would motivate someone to create misinformation like this with fabricated statistics? To arouse fear? For what? While there are many different forms of malicious intent regarding the motivation to create misinformation, this one has an unclear benefit for the publisher. It could be a very dark individual who got joy from stimulating fear, or a troubled 17 year old that found creating and sharing misinformation to be funny or fun? Money is also a huge reason for misinformation to be created, but potential profit generation from this type of information is also unclear! False statistics are easily misleading, because data and statistics are variables that we would use to process something as logical truth. I found that this is actually a very common issue as a form of misinformation that can be very dangerous because they are easily believed.