Becoming Media Literate on Public Health Topics with BYU Alum, Journalist, and Public Health Advocate Christine Frandsen

 As part of BYU’s Homecoming Week, we’re spotlighting alum Christine Frandsen—a journalist turned public health professional—who shares how media literacy can help us recognize bias and misinformation in health news. From understanding journalism structures to questioning social media sources, Christine and Dr. Cougar Hall explore what it really means to “know your sources” in today’s world of public health communication. 

Keywords: BYU alum, journalism, media literacy, public health misinformation, media bias, social media and mental health, critical thinking, credible sources. 

Recorded, Edited & Produced by Christy Gonzalez, Harper Xinyu Zhang, Kailey Hopkins, and Tanya Gale

Transcript

 Cougar: [00:00:00] Welcome to Y Health, a podcast brought to you by the BYU Public Health Department. I'm Dr. Cougar Hall, a professor here at Brigham Young University where the, you are a student parent, or BYU fan. This podcast will help you navigate the world of public health. Our podcast strives to help individuals receive accurate information regarding public health. 

So whether it's global or local, we will discuss how it pertains to you. Just kick back and relax as we talk about why health. Christine Fransen, and welcome to the Y Health Podcast. 

Christine: So happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me 

Cougar: So. We've probably seen each other a few times. You're a former student, but this is the first time we've actually been able to sit down and chat. 

Christine: That's right. 

Cougar: So that's not just for the audience then, but for me as well. Will you take a minute and introduce yourself, who you are, and where [00:01:00] you're from and what you've done? 

Christine: Sure. I'm originally from California, from a small town near Palm Springs called Banning, and I'm proud Banning native and grew up there my whole life until I came to BYU, I was a journalism major here and shortly after. 

Graduation got married and moved to Europe and then over to Boston and then back here to Provo. 

Cougar: You can't just skip over Europe that Where did you live? In Europe. This is amazing. 

Christine: So as a BYU student, I had done the Romania program, internship program, working in orphanages there in a little town called Yosh, and I met my now husband and he served his mission in Budapest, Hungary. 

And we just really, he wasn't sure. We were both graduating. He knew he wanted to do graduate school or work, wasn't quite sure about his future, wanted to kind of try out working. So, he was hired by a company called McKinsey and you can kind of choose your office. Um, and so we thought, let's go have an adventure. 

So, we went to Budapest where he worked as a consultant for two years, [00:02:00] and I just kind of kicked around the city and we had our first child there. Just came to really love Hungary and we're able to go and visit Romania and spend some time there next door. Wow. 

Cougar: Okay. Now I'm jealous. It was 

Christine: great. Great way to start a marriage. 

And honestly, you have many latter-day saint listeners. It was honestly kind of like serving a couple's mission at the beginning of our marriage. 

Cougar: Yeah. 

Christine: In a lot of ways. We served with the branch missionary effort, and so it was a lot of fun. 

Cougar: That's so cool. 

Christine: Yeah, and our son that was born there is now serving a mission in Bulgaria. 

Cougar: So, in that 

Christine: same, same area, full 

Cougar: circle, huh? Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. Funny how it works out. And then you returned home. 

Christine: Yeah. So, he decided he did wanna be a professor, and so we went, he had been able to defer graduate school, and so we moved to Boston, had three more children, and when we were living there. 

And then he finished up and did a fellowship for a couple of years, and then we, and then settled here. Got a job offer from BYU. We've been back to, to Boston for a year on [00:03:00] sabbatical. Actually, right after I finished my MPH, um, but back when we settled here in Provo is when we added three more children to our family via foster care. 

So, we actually have seven children. 

Cougar: Wow. Okay. Good for you. That's really exciting. 

Christine: So, yeah. 

Cougar: And what brought you back for an MPH here in our, in our department? 

Christine: That is a good question. So, after we had been here for a few years, and this is before our three oldest daughters joined our family. I just felt our kids were starting to be in school and I felt the space opening up for me that I wanted to maybe do something school-wise. 

And my husband said, why don't you do graduate school at BYU? And I said, if they don't have a graduate program in journalism, and I don't know what I would do. And he said, why don't you make a list based on the experiences that you've had in your life the last few years? If you could design a graduate program, what would it be? 

So I wrote out a list of the kind of things that I'm interested in, the experiences that I've had, who I consider myself to be at my [00:04:00] core, really like some deep, some deep thinking and some deep exploring. Wrote the list and gave it to my husband, and he got on B'S webpage and started looking through the graduate program and he pulled up the MPH, the Masters of Public Health and it was. 

Rie, how similar it was to the list that I had created. And I had never, I didn't know anything about public health, but in the meantime, since we'd been married, we, we had spent time abroad. I'd had my experience in Romania, and then after I went as an intern in Romania, I facilitated the program for BYU for two years afterward. 

So, I was really interested in culture and in health and in some of the issues facing, especially people in inter developed countries. It just seemed like one of those lightning strikes. Yeah. Where I thought, oh my goodness, public. What is public health? Maybe that's for me. We also have a child who, she has a chronic health condition that's been a real struggle throughout her life. 

She has an extreme case of it, and it's just been, it's been a lot. And so that experience also thinking about [00:05:00] things like chronic health treatment, treatment, adherence, the way that it turns your life upside down. It just really came together and I thought, this is, this is the degree that I should seek. 

So, yeah. 

Cougar: Wow. Okay. You have such a great story, and you came back to BYU. Is this 2016? 20 20 

Christine: 16? Mm-hmm. I graduated in 2018. 

Cougar: In 2018. Oh, my goodness. There's so many things I want to ask. Let me start with, what did you do post-graduation? 

Christine: So I had done my internship with the Utah Asthma Department as, and they wanted me to come and work there full-time in Salt Lake, and my kids were still little at the time. 

So, I spent some time praying about it and thinking about it, and I thought, at least for another few years, I really wanna be at home with my young kids. And so, after the degree, I went back to being a stay-at-home mom for a few years, 

Cougar: and I'm just thinking public health. So we had journalism, we have some international experiences, and we have a child with a chronic health condition that [00:06:00] is incredibly frustrating for everyone involved, not the least of which is her. 

Uh, combining this, I'm, I'm thinking about public health currently, and we're, we're in a climate where in public health, one of the most commonly discussed topics at the moment is misinformation, disinformation, health messaging. It's just, we've lost that trust in many of our government agencies, including our public health agencies, and it's, we're really scrambling, and I have to think as a journalist. 

Also, someone who sees the world now through a public health lens, 

Christine: right? 

Cougar: You're rubbing up against these things. And maybe to answer this question best I should ask, 'cause I know before our listeners, what are you doing currently? Professionally? There's maybe two or three things that are gonna intersect that'll be really fascinating 

Christine: for us. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, so currently I teach at a private high school here in Provo, Utah. And I teach a class called AP Seminar. It's part of the capstone program that's for high [00:07:00] schools now. With AP programs and I teach research and critical thinking skills. 

Cougar: So this is the intersection I think I wanna talk about. 

Christine: Yeah. 

Cougar: And I don't wanna step on any political landmines and 

Christine: No, but I think that we can talk about general things that Yeah. Everyone can find interesting. 

Cougar: Truthfully. Yeah, I, amen. I don't know that this is a left or a right thing or whatever side of the aisle someone might be sitting. I actually think we're all starting to see and feel some of the same pressures. 

Christine: Right? 

Cougar: So around critical thinking and around journalism or what, what I think for a moment we call the 24-hour news cycle, and now I think with social media, it might even be a six-hour news cycle. I don't know. Right? But everyone, including us today, has a microphone and just the challenge of deciphering in that information, which is most accurate and most and most correct, or maybe least biased. 

And teaching our young people how to navigate. 'cause you and I grew up in a different media landscape, [00:08:00] 

Christine: right? 

Cougar: So how do you tackle that? And then maybe we tack on the public health messaging. 

Christine: Yeah. Well, that's honestly what I've loved most about teaching this course. I mean, I love my students the most. 

That's, that's the number one best part of teaching is got the best students. But I love what I teach because like you say. The types of things that are new to them that I feel so old school and so old fashioned, but in such a great way that we talk about things like bias. We go over all the different types of bias. 

These are new ideas for these teenagers we talk about, I, I introduced them to the idea of peer reviewed research, which a lot of adults don't know. But if you're not in the world of academia, uh, you, you might not, you might not have ever heard of peer reviewed research or really know what that is. 

Introducing my students to that kind of thing has been really exciting. And at the very beginning of the school year, we pulled up a research article by Paul Cox on Cyana Bacteria in the Great Salt Lake, and talked about some of the scientific findings and [00:09:00] about how when we talk about big topics that can be really politicized, like climate change or clean water or clean air, these can become really politicized. 

We spent a lot of time talking about how. Get boring. You guys get really boring. Mm-hmm. Go for the details. Go to the primary sources. What are primary sources? Really understand just the boring in and out details of something day to day, because then that gives you a better understanding, a richer understanding of what you think and where we're headed, and what your real concerns might be. 

Not the concerns that might be fabricated by someone who wants you to click on something that's emotionally manipulative or politically manipulative. Really get into the details and those boring details of knowing what things are about. 

Cougar: I'm so thankful that you're teaching our young people. I have to say, I wish I had kids young enough to send them to your school and to receive this capstone instruction. 

Are there one or two tips for either young people or for the parents of young people? In helping them access [00:10:00] those primary sources. Yeah. Are you using specific databases? Is this just Google Scholar? 

Christine: So I introduced them to Google Scholar and then I also together we search online for, for sites like all sites now, we talk about media ratings, the different numbers that they have and what they indicate for how biased and how accurate, even individual articles now that they, they'll calibrate and how to look online for people who are more centrist as a place to start. 

If there's a, a woman named Sharon McMahon, who's become very popular. She, she says, she claims, and I, and I believe her, that she's got as many right wing as left-wing followers because what she's trying to do is restore those values of, of returning to the facts and returning to calm and reason discussion. 

And so, I point my students towards sources like there, and I say, that's where you start. And then you start asking questions and you question everything. You look for different perspectives. Again, this is what I learned in public health. There are so many perspectives. You would never begin a project [00:11:00] without first conducting a community assessment because you need the perspective of the, of those stakeholders. 

But you need as many people involved as sitting at that table as possible to make good decisions. And so, we actually have this fake dinner party lesson that we go through where we talk about perspective and the importance of inviting everyone you can to the table who has a perspective or who has a stake. 

And really adding that richness. We've talked a lot throughout the year about embracing complexity because things are complex. They are nuanced, and that at the end of the day, you can still have strong opinions. You can have very definite and very clear opinions about any given topic, but it should be with the understanding and the respect for the complexity involved. 

Cougar: You're exactly right. Everything's so nuanced. And messy truthfully like that. I mean, you're saying complexity and I'm thinking messy most of the time. 

Christine: Right, right. Yeah. 

Cougar: And so, when there's something that's so definitive, I just reminds me of something I learned in my master's program [00:12:00] and then was reinforced later in, in additional graduate studies, which was approach certainty with extreme caution. 

And that, I mean, they, they may as well just tattooed that on our forearms because that was in every class you, you think, you know. Approach that certainty with caution. 'cause once you're certain, you're now blind to new information and to new truth. And so, I love the things you're teaching. I wish I had the skillset to teach my students these things in my classes at Oh, I'm sure 

Christine: your students are learning many of these things from you, especially through the experiential learning that they do here at BYU and with you. 

Cougar: I sure hope so. It's that, that 

Christine: experiential learning, it teaches you to reach outside of yourself and your own experience. I mean, growing up in banning California. That's a big part of who I am, and it's something that I've carried with me throughout my life. When I came to BYU, I experienced a significant amount of culture shock. 

Yeah. Significant. I'd never been around so many members of the church. I'd never been around so many people [00:13:00] of the same race or with very similar backgrounds, socioeconomically. Mm-hmm. And I spent a lot of years kind of trying to acclimate, trying to understand, trying to fit in, because that was different for me. 

So, I appreciate where I grew up in this little town where. Um, very well, not diverse economically. It was very poor economically. Every family there was struggling and so you didn't realize so much that you were struggling. Well, I guess in ways you do, you still know if you are, but more importantly, just again, those range of perspectives that came from my high school was like 25. 

I think it was evenly split, 25% black, 25% Hispanic. 25% Asian and 25% Native American, white and other, and it was just the best growing up years. I didn't realize that at the time, but I've become more and more grateful for it over the years. I mean, my best friend, I just knew that she'd moved to California, um, when she was five. 

And we've been best friends since middle school even. I was just texting her. She's coming [00:14:00] up for a visit. We always get together for our birthdays, even though she still lives in California. And it was during the MPH. I went to, I went on an experiential learning experience with Mike Barnes in Washington DC Yeah. 

And I happened upon this museum exhibit talking about the Khmer Rouge regime in Southeast Asia. And I was reading about it and I was learning about it, and I called my best friend, and I said, I think this is what happened to your family. I think you're a refugee. And she said. Yeah, I think so. We don't talk about it very much, but yeah, and come to find out, this was her experience. 

It's why her family; they were in a refugee camp. It's why she came to California. And then we started talking about how many other kids at our schools had come at our school, had come into the same circumstances. I wanted to just thank the heavens for a long time after that because I thought. It's like a treasure to be able to have had experiences in your life where you get to understand and love, truly love and be very good friends with people who've experienced such different things [00:15:00] than you have. 

Cougar: I couldn't agree more, I think. I think to some extent, well, here's my personal theory, Christine. I think when you have that broad exposure at a young age, I think it's very protective or preventative. To maybe what we now call us versus them mentality of, of seeing yourself as different or the other side, you know, good and bad. 

Dividing the world, you know, in polarizing 

Christine: right. 

Cougar: The world in these ways. I'm wondering, and thank you for sharing that. I want to go gather some research at your high school because the perfect sample, that's the researcher in me, but our early experiences. Become so foundational. 

Christine: Right. 

Cougar: And it was because of those early experiences that Yeah, the BYU culture took a long time to like, well, this is really jarring. 

Um, I've never been in a situation like this where it's so homogeneous or so specifically LDS or white or, yeah. 

Christine: Well, and I will say I immediately found the [00:16:00] BYU culture to be very welcoming, very intellectually curious and aware and honest. My professors were. Very open and we're very honest about discovering together and thinking critically about the issues in the world. 

That was never for me, part of the culture shock. I felt like in my classes from my professors, it was always very just a wonderful and safe place to be. I've always felt home here at BYU that I could be myself and I could have honest questions and that I would be shepherded to find the answers to those questions from, from Faithful Disciple scholars, 

Cougar: I wonder. 

I think that's the case in most departments now. I really do. I, I wonder if journalism wasn't ahead of the curve A little bit, 

Christine: maybe. So, I did have great, great journalism mentors. 

Cougar: Yeah. Oh, well that's absolutely what we're striving for in the Department of Public Health. 

Christine: Yeah. And I've had, oh gosh, when I, when I did the MPH here, just the professors in this department are just all of them.[00:17:00] 

Excellent, excellent people, excellent professionals. I learned so much. Every class I took in the MPH was super high quality. 

Cougar: Love it. Well, thank you. A little plug for our program there, right? Yeah. Let me return to our discussion. Where, where are the, where are the, the challenges because you're educating young people, helping them recognize bias, helping them find, you know, balanced primary sources. 

Where's the resistance? Is there resistance from an us versus them mentality? Is there an, is there any resistance from No, I know what I know. Uh, is it, does it come from parents? If it comes, does it come from children? And there maybe some students have less exposure that of what you just explained in your childhood. 

And some have more, some have traveled, some have not. Any, what are the challenge points? 

Christine: That is a great question. I, when I first began teaching at this school. I [00:18:00] really wondered because it's, there's a reputation here in Provo, honestly, but then especially at this school, for it being a community of like-minded individuals who thinks a certain way politically or what have you. 

My experience with these children at this school has been not so much that they have set ideas and are resistant to what we talk about. Surprisingly, what I, just, to be honest, what I've found is that it's more of a problem of they haven't thought about. Deep issues and the lives of other people very much. 

In some cases, in some cases there are children from families who they've traveled extensively. Their, their parents talk about it at home. A lot of the have parents in academia, so these topics come up. But for some of my students that struggle the most with it, with it, it's not that they're resistant to opening their minds and looking at and other people's lives. 

They just don't have experience with it. And when we begin the course, we talk about. We're gonna learn through questions. This is a question based course, and I want you to come up with your [00:19:00] questions. What are you interested in? What do you wonder about? What do you worry about? What are your questions? 

And for some of the students, they say, I don't have questions. I, my life is really pretty comfortable. I'm pretty happy. I've got this nice family and this nice happy valley, and I don't think about anything. I hear that. And then, and then I push back. And we do find lots of things, actually, especially as the year has gone on. 

Bring in documentaries and topics and literature. Art, we, we look at a variety of sources and then the ideas start to come out and, well, actually I do kind of wonder about this, or I don't really like, you know, I don't really like what I hear about this. It doesn't feel fair to me. I wanna hear another perspective. 

And so more of that comes out. 

Cougar: What are the topics? Can I ask? Is that okay? Sure. 

Christine: We have had a variety because they come from the students. We've had a variety of, so we have. Themes that I'll choose and, and the first theme that we chose was transformation. So that's when we pulled out some research [00:20:00] from some recent articles by Paul Cox on Cyana Bacteria in the Great Salt Lake, and talk about how the Great Salt Lake is transformed and about in our environment, where do we see transformation? 

And then I brought in different, different art pieces, again, different poetry, music lyrics. We talked about a lot of different things. So then I kind of, after we'd done that example, I said, now I wanna open up to you guys. And what's interesting is probably half of my students wanted their first research questions to involve social media and mental health, teenage mental health, and connected to social media issues. 

And at first, I thought. Are you guys just picking something easy? But as I questioned them and as I pushed back, I thought, no, this is really near and dear to them. This is something they experience day in and day out. Yeah. And so I have one student, especially who, who really did not have that self-efficacy in herself as a student. 

She didn't, she didn't feel that self-efficacy of her, of her possibility of success in my [00:21:00] class. And at the end of last semester, she was working on a project in social media. As I just really kind of push and pull and push and pull those kids' brains every day and challenge 'em and challenge 'em and ask 'em questions to get 'em thinking. 

She got more and more interested in the topic and she ended up doing a presentation at the end of the semester that I just, I cried through the presentation because it was so real and it was so honest and I so many beautiful things that she brought so many heart wrenching things that she brought out, but she really spoke from experience, but she brought in that research. 

She brought in the facts and the evidence. Where at the end I felt that, that the logos and I felt the pathos. Yeah. And she just ended by saying, can you imagine what it's like to be us? And know that every day of your life, any choice you make, anything you say might be recorded. 

Cougar: Pretty remarkable, huh? 

Christine: As a 40 something year old, I can't relate to that. 

Right. 

Cougar: That 

Christine: wasn't in my brain, that wasn't in my experience when my brain was developing. And that's, that's [00:22:00] heavy. 

Cougar: This really strikes a chord with me. I just launched a study and I'm collecting data here at BYU and also a private university in Ecuador looking at what we call problematic smartphone use or PSU, and a variety of health indicators to include physical health, social health, mental, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health. 

So we just started collecting data this week. We're shooting for 500 participants here at BYU and 500 participants in Keto, but it really came from reading a book called The Anxious Generation from Jonathan 

Christine: Hyatt, A great book, 

Cougar: maybe you're familiar with Jonathan H and maybe what I'd like to do, and I, I didn't give you a heads up on this, Christine, but with your background in journalism, again, I don't know if there's anything that's changed the news landscape as much as social media and. 

Both of us probably have friends who get most of their news from TikTok. 

Christine: Right? 

Cougar: Or, [00:23:00] or it doesn't have to be TikTok, but just through social media, secondhand third hand, fourth hand headlines that have been retweeted or shared or so from with your journalism background. 

Christine: Yeah. 

Cougar: Thoughts on social media, thoughts on this landscape, and especially young people in mental health. 

I think there's a, there's probably a couple intersections here. 

Christine: I think there is, and I think I would add to that, artificial intelligence. 

Cougar: Ah, yes. 

Christine: That is another key factor that is as it plays into this new landscape of social media and most people getting their news from social media, artificial intelligence is another big part of that. 

And again, my students are working on all of these projects. These are things that are really salient to them. But I would say, and I'm gonna borrow this from a student who brought this up just this past week, he was really working through an argument. He wanted to make an a. In a presentation and he said, I think what we need to do is change hearts and minds and encourage a [00:24:00] return to intentional seeking for quality sources. 

Um, we have to just like, when, when, and this is me now adding to that, I think that as a child of the eighties, we all are seeing the effects now of the advent of processed food. Yeah. That became really convenient and tasty and easy, and then we watched what that did to our health as we aged, and we're now making these intentional choices and we're more informed, and the research is there to show us what some of those things did to our health. 

I think that we'll see the same process happen with news and with social media. I've seen so many people, this is anecdotal, not referencing any research here, but it does seem like people are pulling back a little bit from Facebook. You don't see as many people posting their, their personal experiences and things on Facebook. 

They're not as trusting of what is happening with their data, with their privacy, and people are pulling back from that. And so whenever we have this wave of something new that's changing the [00:25:00] landscape of our lives, I do have a tendency to be an optimist and I do tend to see how human in with human nature. 

We do tend to recognize danger and we do tend to try to mitigate it or pull back from it. And I hope I see that happening with this where there are so many more voices on lens saying, Hey, we need to be responsible. We need to have quality reporting. We need to know the facts of what exactly is going on. 

We need to turn off the voices that are screaming at each other, and we need to get to the bottom of, I mean, any day of the week. I mean, this week included, we've had another thing happen this week where as soon as the event happened, the. Just the facts of the event happened. Both sides emerge to just shout each other down and call the other liars and say that they've been misrepresented. 

And we see evidence of hypocrisy on both sides. And I think that, again, there's, there's a silent majority of people in America who will quietly choose something else. Yeah, I, I see that [00:26:00] growing in tendency, just as, again, we're, we're doing better with what we're eating, what we're putting in our bodies. 

We're more conscious of getting steps, getting exercise, getting outside, strengthening our bodies as we age through weightlifting, all of these things that we're finding out about. I, I'm an optimist. I love it. I see, I see humans wanting to be better and do better and wanting to be intentional. 

Cougar: I agree. 

And first of all, what a great connection between dietary choices and processed foods and, you know, transitioning from a time where the average American home. Probably had a meal made from scratch that we were intentional about and prepared and made sure we had a variety of, of entrees on the table, so to speak, for the family to sit down to. 

And then, and I love Costco as much as the next person I'm sure, but I go to Costco and I buy ready-made meals and, and I suppose that's, that might be a little better off than some of my friends who maybe didn't go to Costco. They went to Taco Bell and. [00:27:00] To be fair, all of that can fit into a healthy nutrition plan, right? 

But the way that we've really lost focus on, you know, just because of convenience and because of affordability and price per calorie. Really allowed that to sway us. 

Christine: I think convenience is the key word there. Where But will I still get a lot of news from my social media? Absolutely. Yeah. I'm subscribed to all the major newspapers and outlets. 

I guess we don't really call them papers anymore. That's kind of an anachronism. But, um, I am subscribed and I will get their, their stories and things, but what I'm trying to do is think I need to not just read the headline because also even from a, from a news. Venue that is pretty unbiased or is pretty reliable. 

Headlines do have to grab you. Mm-hmm. Or you won't click. Mm-hmm. So I, that's my goal lately, and I think we need to just make small goals. My goal is if something catches my eye, I'm not gonna read the headline, have some kind of a [00:28:00] feeling, or take a heuristic shortcut in my mind and judge something or someone, no, I'm gonna click on it and I'm gonna read the article. 

I'm gonna consider the sources and I'm gonna question it, and I'm not gonna do what's convenient because if I just keep scrolling through and only reading the headlines, pretty soon I'm gonna be feeling pretty bleak. 

Cougar: Yeah. Oh, you're, there's so many things I wanna say. First of all, there've been a couple really good studies related to public health and healthcare, where social media outlets have just grabbed the headline or manufactured the headline. 

Tried to represent what the actual study found, 

Christine: right? 

Cougar: And they went and compared, okay, here's what the study found and here's what social media put out about that study. And the accuracy was really low. So, and again, if I'm not reading the actual study, I'm just getting the headline from whatever source, I'm actually not getting the correct information.[00:29:00] 

So I, I've seen multiple studies I've shared with my students. Relative to headlines. 

Christine: Right. 

Cougar: One other thing that just comes to mind, and it's because Christine, my wife, is the media specialist at the junior high. So she doesn't teach the course, but when students come in for their research project, she helps them find primary sources and helps direct them to the best, most reliable information that's, you know, most objective, least biased. 

And so, you know, so she has a little bit of that information that you know that you're teaching. That's for sure. We had a friend who, who, I think it's called Retweeting. I don't know if we're still using that term. We know that Twitter is X, but, but retweeted a news article with a little video link and my wife clicked on it 'cause it comes from a friend and it was really bias, like incredibly biased information regardless of where your politics are. 

So she says, I feel like I have a responsibility to respond. And I'm like, don't do it. Just don't touch that, don't, you know, don't step in that. 

Christine: Yeah. 

Cougar: [00:30:00] She says, no, because this is, this is what we do. We're adults. So she replied, she said, I'm just curious, did you read this? Because I, I found it to be actually really biased. 

That's all she said. And immediately got a response. Oh, no, I didn't read it. I just thought it was. That 

Christine: is 

Cougar: so, we're so common, right? We're, yeah. We're in an environment where we might share things that we haven't even read. 

Christine: Mm-hmm. 

Cougar: And how this kind of like it, it's like an old school game of telephone. It just gets passed along. 

Christine: What's interesting that hasn't changed is that even 20 years ago, 25 years ago when I was being trained in journalism, the structure of a newspaper article, so your paragraphs are called graphs and theory. Of course, in your first graph, you've got who, what, when, where, why, as many of those w's as you can get it. 

Yeah. Then within first three graphs you need, you know, they say have as much as what you really want people to know in those, because most people won't read past the third graph. Yeah. But if you are interested in the topic and you keep reading, that's where it gets interesting. And [00:31:00] so many of the sources of where something comes from, if it's research, what the name of the research study is, or where it was published, will come later on and very few people make it. 

Further down the article, 

Cougar: what's the term my students use? Doom Scrolling. 

Christine: Right? 

Cougar: They're just scrolling. If they click on it, they've got about 10 seconds to just read that first, as you say, graph, they're not getting down to the primary sources or to the actual quotations from the person. They're just judging on how the author is presented at Line Me. 

Christine: So that's what I think. Yeah. Oh 

Cougar: my goodness. All right. Well, I'm really glad we have people. You know, in the trenches, so to speak, teaching the next generation I and the 

Christine: future is bright. The next generation, they're thinkers and they care and they're sensitive. Yeah. They have great capacity for noticing the world around them, and as I teach these students in high school these skills and push them on these kinds of things, I am totally confident in our future. 

Cougar: Yeah. [00:32:00] I so appreciate your optimism. I think if, if there's, uh. There are multiple things that America's really good at, but I think one of them is recognizing when there's a need and there is a need. Right now, as you said, there's a silent majority who's saying, no, I need to do something differently. Like I desire a whole different brand of news and information and reporting. 

Well, as that grows, as that need, America's really good at filling needs. 

Christine: Exactly. That's basic economic supply and demand. Yeah, that is. We demand. Something, it will be supplied, someone will fill that space. Right? 

Cougar: So it's not just about pendulum swinging, it's about there is an unmet need and this is the beauty of capitalism in so many ways, it will fill that need. 

So it's just gonna take a minute and, but we'll get this down. I think from the social media perspective, I wonder if, we'll look back at, I don't know, from 2010 to 2030 and say, what were we thinking? Like, and I'm a [00:33:00] dad who gave all four kids a smartphone when they turned 12, and it's not 2030. I'm already looking back saying, oh my gosh. 

Like I'm part of the problem. So, oh goodness. Don't we learn? Yeah, 

Christine: learn through experience. As parents, we continue learning. Well, one thing that I still remember very vividly from Dr. Lindsay's class. Mm-hmm. Dr. Lindsay has since retired. Love him. I'm such a great professor, and in his class we talked a lot about his efforts to decrease smoking. 

He really, I think for me, demonstrated that we had the research on smoking 30, 40, arguably 50 years before public policy changed. Yeah. And so I was telling my kids the other day, I, I wonder if your children will one day look at photos of your generation as kids having a smartphone, their own personal smartphone in their hand, and have the reaction that my generation did to seeing our grandmother's. 

Nine months pregnant. Smoking in a photo. Yeah. 

Cougar: Yeah. Leave it to Dr. [00:34:00] Lindsay to just make things just crystal clear. Right, right. Such a master teacher. He really is. I love that. L let's wrap things up. It's a Friday, the listeners don't know, but it's a Friday and it's a spring break Friday, so we gotta get you home. 

Are there one or two things for parents? 'cause here I'm thinking, you know, we're gonna look back at this 20 year period and say, where were the adults? Well, the adults were on their phones like me. What. One or two takeaways maybe, and I'm putting you on the spot for parents and we've talked a lot about teaching young people and I think young people are gonna figure it out. 

I think they're the future's bright. Anything for parents at this point? 

Christine: I think I'll give you one. As a parent who's struggling, yeah. Because we are all struggling. We're all addicted to our phones. Something that is just a goal for me that I'll share is I want to return to a place where I can be bored comfortably. 

And I want to notice more often when I'm at a doctor appointment in a lobby or [00:35:00] in line at the checkout or somewhere, and the, my first instinct is to grab my phone, especially when I do have one of my kids with me and I could be having a conversation. Those muscles for me have weakened, and that instinct for me is, has gotten more strong than I'm comfortable with. 

I do want to reach for my phone a lot, and so that's a goal that I'm making as a, as a parent, is to be more present with my kids and to keep my phone put away. So, oh, I love it. We'll see how it goes, but I'm gonna be trying, 

Cougar: well, as a fellow traveler, let me tell you, I'm doing the same thing. I stop, you know, for 30 seconds at a stoplight in the line of the grocery store, and I'm like, oh, I'm not doing anything for two seconds. 

I should look at my phone. Just keep it in my pocket. Right? It's okay. Say hello to someone. Look, look around. Right? Notice the trees, notice the mountains. Right? 

Christine: And and the other thing that I would say as a teacher and as a public health person, someone who's interested in research and someone who's [00:36:00] interested in understanding our world better, I would say the best thing that we can do with our kids is ask questions. 

A lot of time when we are together and we have time together at a dinner table or on a walk or sometime. We almost think, especially as our kids get older and can think and speak better, that we need to be the ones supplying this really interesting conversation. We need to have something to say. We need to be really entertaining and we need to make our teenager happy that they sacrifice some friend time and spend time with us. 

But I think the best people that I love having conversations with are people that think of interesting questions and they ask interesting questions, and then we discuss it. And I think that that could really change families and it could really change kids. In this current climate that we're living in, just to think of more interesting questions and ask more interesting questions, and then be really vulnerable about the awkward space that opens up in revealing to friends, to children, to whoever, that you don't know everything. 

Yeah, but that curiosity is even better than knowing everything. [00:37:00] And that then, hey, if we wanna pull out our smart smartphones and look up something together and discuss it together. Talk about the limitations and the implications of all this information that we're finding online, then great. It becomes a different thing when we're doing it together and we're discussing it. 

Cougar: Oh my goodness. I have more questions, but that's a mic drop, what you just shared. I hope everyone listens to that and rewinds it and listens to it again. Well, 

Christine: thanks. We'll see if I can put my money where my mouth is and make improvements in my own life. 

Cougar: Well, I don't think it's two people talking like, Hey, be more like us. 

It's two people saying, Hey. I've seen enough, 

Christine: right. 

Cougar: To know that things need to change a little bit. Yeah. But I love that you bring a lot of optimism and hope to it. I'm certain that makes a difference in your classroom with your students and for your children. You know, for the people in your own home to know that they have a mom who's inquiring about them and asking. 

We do so much telling as parents, 

Christine: right. 

Cougar: But to ask and then to listen and to be okay with the answer. That probably have [00:38:00] like 15 follow-up questions, right? Right. Because now we're actually talking, now we're conversing, we're connecting holy smokes. 

Christine: And to reassure at the end of it all, there's always reason for hope. 

We're always heading in a great direction and people before us have gone through difficult times as well and adjustments and, and there's always reason to hope. 

Cougar: Well, you're a journalism major. I used to listen to Paul Harvey. Do you remember Paul Harvey? 

Christine: You know, I wasn't a Paul Harvey listener, but I am aware of Paul Harvey a little bit. 

Cougar: So I mean, I was quite young and he had a syndicated radio program that my mom listened to on our A BC affiliate in Seattle, Washington. And it was called the rest of the story. So he would, he'd give you a little more information. So you heard this, but did you know all the background of the contact? I do remember that. 

Christine: I think I, I heard an episode or two. 

Cougar: I loved that he would always sign off by saying Paul Harvey, good day. And when he said Good day, I knew I had to run to the bus stop. That meant it was eight 15. But so much fun to have you on the show. 

Christine: Thank you so much for having me. And 

Cougar: the irony of just a, a public health [00:39:00] yahoo. 

Who has a guest who's actually proficient in journalism and also is proficient in public health and is actually out there teaching, combining all these skills. Thank you for sharing your time with us on the Y Health Podcast. 

Christine: It's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me. 

Cougar: Thanks, Christine. Thank you for joining us today. 

Catch us on our next episode and don't forget to subscribe to future Y Health episodes.