Kelli and Judy need to be more social media literate before giving feedback on social media
I’m really frustrated that they not only succumb to reading threads on various social media apps about the women on their teams, but that they seem to have some fundamental misunderstandings about how outlandish things online can become. The interaction during training camp with Faith really bothered me, and I worry that with Kelli and Judy being older, that they can’t spot a photo someone posted versus an unflattering screenshot from a video. These things are rather easy for younger folks to decipher, but the literacy isn’t fully there for older generations.
Take AI, now, too, and it’s just a recipe for more misunderstandings.
I also found Judy’s sentiment of “oh, we try not to read things” to be entirely disingenuous. I think the filmmakers cutting to the pair of them speculating about gossip was spot on after Judy made her claim.
If anything, I find their speculations and engagement with the content to be what’s unprofessional.
— EDIT: I left this in a comment but I’ll add it here too! Will leave the original post above unedited.
I think some people are reading my post as “older people are incapable of understanding social media,” which isn’t what I meant BUT is what I ended up saying – so the ageism is a fair criticism.
My point is that digital literacy is a learned skill. People who have spent 20+ years immersed in internet culture tend to recognize things like misleading screenshots, rage bait, engagement farming, selectively clipped videos, and now AI more intuitively because we’ve had years of exposure to those patterns. That’s a difference in experience NOT intelligence.
There are actually studies showing that digital literacy training improves people’s ability to identify manipulated images and misinformation, particularly among older adults. That doesn’t mean older adults can’t learn it, it just means these are acquired skills.
My criticism wasn’t that Kelli and Judy are older women. It was that, in leadership positions where social media can affect people’s careers, they appeared to give weight to online speculation without demonstrating the level of media literacy I’d hope for. Those are two very different critiques.
And to be clear, I’m not arguing that representatives of a brand shouldn’t be thoughtful about what they post. I’m talking about the current ease with which photos, screenshots, cropped videos, and AI can remove context or create misleading narratives. Leaders evaluating that kind of material need to be especially careful before drawing conclusions!