No bickering around the Christmas tree! If your family are trapped by their algorithms, here’s the way out | Dr Kaitlyn Regehr

My research on social media shows high levels of misinformation and disconnect. Here’s how to talk to kith and kin this week without tears and tantrums

Dr Kaitlyn Regehr is the programme director of digital humanities at University College London

D

ecember: a time of cultural rituals around food, gathering and taking to TikTok to bemoan bigoted relatives. Indeed, this new cultural ritual is now a social media staple that sweeps across our feeds over the festive period. We post about intergenerational debates on politics; stomaching “wokeness” jokes; and the now near-mythical “uncle” character – the older male holding court at the table – exemplified by tweets that go something like: “My uncle just went on a 10-minute rant about [insert topic]. The turkey is dry and so is his take.”

In these situations, many of us are torn between the impulse to call out harmful speech and our (or more often, our mother’s) longing for family harmony. These micro-yuletide tensions are played out at dinner tables across the country and are indicative of broader cultural and political polarisation. Polarisation is amplified by the social media-driven information silos in which we all now live.