By Andrew Zucker, Ed.D.

An alarming impact of the internet and especially the proliferation of social media online has been the ease, frequency, and speed with which misinformation is disseminated, often with harmful results. Climate change is not a hoax, vaccines do not cause autism, and the 2020 presidential election in the US was not stolen—but large numbers of people accept statements to the contrary as accurate. Some experts estimate that as many as one million people in the United States died unnecessarily during the COVID-19 pandemic due to misinformation. Nonetheless, there is hope that we can mitigate this dangerous problem, and young people have the potential to lead the way.

Two recently published popular books summarize decades of research showing that it is possible to help people make better judgments about information. In some cases, people can be “inoculated” against misinformation, in much the same way they are against disease. One of the books is Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity by Sander van der Linden, and the other is Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg. Each provides dozens of examples illustrating how to resist misinformation, be it through games, classroom lessons, warnings on websites, or other means.

Neither book claims that efforts to combat misinformation will be 100 percent effective, especially at a time when powerful figures spread misinformation and disinformation. (Disinformation is intentionally spreading misinformation.) On the other hand, the authors do claim that there are proven methods to help adults and young people resist varied types of misinformation, and that these efforts are worthwhile. To illustrate, here are two different approaches:

• “Lateral reading” is a technique used by expert fact-checkers that is easy for anyone to adopt. Rather than spending a great deal of time reading about a questionable claim “vertically,” from top to bottom, the experts leave the original page or a dubious claim by opening another web browser tab. What do other sources say about the claim? What do other sources say about the person or group making the claim? Lateral reading has been shown to help people reach sounder conclusions about the accuracy of information compared to those who do not use this approach, which is most people.

• Bad News is a free online game that simulates the feed of a social media site, using humor and satire to engage users. Players can earn badges by mastering different levels of the game through spreading misinformation and gaining social media followers. If a player’s fictitious posts are too ridiculous, they lose points, but if they use appropriate strategies (such as spreading a conspiracy theory), they can gain points. Research with tens of thousands of players shows that by practicing the spread of misinformation through the game, they were significantly less likely to accept inaccurate news headlines as credible in real life. This was true for liberals and conservatives. A similar but shorter game, GoViral!, was later used by the United Nations and other international organizations and was also found to help inoculate people against misinformation.

Empowering the Next Generation

“Our democracy remains under sustained attack through the proliferation of disinformation that is eroding the role of truth in our political and civic discourse. It is our responsibility to ensure our nation’s future leaders are equipped with the tools necessary to identify fact from fiction.”
Phil Murphy, Governor of New Jersey

When it comes to misinformation, young people deserve special attention. Whereas older people remember library card catalogs and a time when printed materials and a few TV networks were their major sources of information, which was generally credible, that is not the world in which today’s young people live. In the US, teenagers report spending almost five hours a day on smartphones and computers. Despite being at the forefront of the digital world, convincing research shows that many young people struggle to evaluate the information they find online. They need help navigating their online world.

A related fact is that young people are exposed to tens of thousands of advertisements annually. They realize, of course, that some people and organizations want to fool them, whether to make money or for other reasons, and young people do not want to be taken for fools. This healthy skepticism makes advertising an excellent starting point to teach about misinformation. Plus, most advertising does not have a partisan political element—making it a less controversial topic than a current hot-button issue—whilst resonating with young people’s awareness of influencer culture.

Efforts by public officials can and should provide an avenue for schools to use research-based knowledge to help students make sense of the flood of information to which they are exposed. For example, in 2023 New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed bipartisan legislation requiring that “information literacy” be taught throughout elementary and secondary schools. For this purpose, information literacy was defined as the skills that enable an individual to recognize when information is needed and to locate, evaluate, and effectively use the needed information. (Nationally, “media literacy” is a more commonly used term.)

When he signed the legislation, Gov. Murphy said, “Our democracy remains under sustained attack through the proliferation of disinformation that is eroding the role of truth in our political and civic discourse. It is our responsibility to ensure our nation’s future leaders are equipped with the tools necessary to identify fact from fiction.”

Similarly, the National Education Association, representing almost three million teachers and other members, has highlighted the importance of media literacy education in its periodical NEA Today. There they note that in the US almost 40 percent of adults under the age of 30 get their news from TikTok, which is not carefully curated and often is a source of misinformation. Recognizing the power and pitfalls of these platforms is key to empowering young people to make informed decisions.

Some of what people need is simple information. For example, many do not know how easy and inexpensive it is for anyone to set up an internet site ending in .org that may look like it is a credible, authoritative organization even if it is not. Some assume that all results from an internet search (usually Google) are reliable, or else why would they be seeing them? Teaching students to use the internet effectively is not a one-time event—it takes time, just like teaching reading or mathematics—but can position learners as uniquely capable of shaping how information is shared and consumed.

There are dozens of tested lessons and techniques that can help people resist misinformation. Parents, teachers, news organizations and others should help people of all ages make sense of the “wild west” world they inhabit online, using the many proven approaches described in these books.