Into the Driver's Seat

Common Sense Media editors help you choose Fact-Checking Tools for Teens and Tweens. Find accurate, credible media sources with these sites.

Beneath the spread of all “fake news,” misinformation, disinformation, digital falsehoods and foreign influence lies society’s failure to teach its citizenry information literacy: how to think critically about the deluge of information that confronts them in our modern digital age. Instead, society has prioritized speed over accuracy, sharing over reading, commenting over understanding. Children are taught to regurgitate what others tell them and to rely on digital assistants to curate the world rather than learn to navigate the informational landscape on their own. Schools no longer teach source triangulation, conflict arbitration, separating fact from opinion, citation chaining, conducting research or even the basic concept of verification and validation. In short, we’ve stopped teaching society how to think about information, leaving our citizenry adrift in the digital wilderness increasingly saturated with falsehoods without so much as a compass or map to help them find their way to safety. The solution is to teach the world's citizenry the basics of information literacy.

"Not sure if a photo matches its caption, or just want to find where it was taken? Use our step-by-step guide to checking the location of images found on the internet ..."

False information can be found online and shared in an instant. How can we teach young people to spot it?

In an era of national attention to what's real and what isn't, we asked educators to share their strategies for helping students sort out fact from fiction.

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"A few days ago we shared with you a new Google feature that allows you to easily fact check online content. Today, we are sharing with you 10 good tips that will enable you to critically assess the veracity and credibility of online content (e.g. news stories).  These are guidelines Facebook Help Centre provided for it users to help them spot fake news. However, these tips can also apply to any other type of content. Students can use them to evaluate digital content and enhance their critical reading comprehension.  We have embedded these tips into the visual below so you can print and share with your students in class. You can also download a PDF copy from this page. Enjoy."

Do students need to learn about fake news? And more generally, should they learn how news is created and how to evaluate its credibility?

Thousands of schools all over the world believe the answer is yes.

Free resource of educational web tools, 21st century skills, tips and tutorials on how teachers and students integrate technology into education

C. M. Rubin