Students say misinformation abounds online. Experts say critical thinking helps them navigate it | 24CA News
Whether it is younger children watching YouTube movies, older ones logging on for video games or teenagers scrolling TikTok, college students right now encounter all method of content material on-line and sometimes merely settle for it as reality, in accordance with 13-year-old Ainara Alleyne.
“I don’t think [younger kids] really know the difference between misinformation, disinformation and true news … These are just things that people are saying. You don’t really know that people can have hidden agendas or misinterpret different things,” famous the Hamilton-based Grade 8 scholar.
It’s a part of why the teenager has joined one among a rising wave of initiatives hoping to spice up college students’ digital literacy and demanding considering abilities, to allow them to higher distinguish what’s what amid the storm of details and misinformation flying across the chaotic on-line areas they’re navigating.
“As younger people we’re so used to using social media, things like Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok, and it’s so easy to spread misinformation on those apps — and even disinformation, where someone purposefully wants to spread information that’s wrong,” stated 17-year-old highschool senior Arjun Ram.
“It’s super important that kids today understand and can decipher what’s real and what’s not.”
24CA News Kids has created a online game that’s not only for enjoyable, however is designed to assist children navigate and distinguish misinformation on-line.
Alleyne and Ram are a part of Reporting 101: Misinformation, a brand new CBC Kids News initiative designed to show college students in Grade 4 by way of 8 about separating reality from fiction, by way of the ultra-popular, blocky, 3D-gaming world of Minecraft. Launched this previous week, the brand new world faucets gamers as budding journalists investigating a narrative tip: summer season trip has been cancelled. Players should discover and communicate with totally different sources, confirm gathered data, decide the reality and write an article from their analysis.
“This game will help kids understand that you should care and that it’s important to track down where your information stems from, and it’s important to decipher whether that’s true or not,” Ram stated.
Embedding this type of studying inside an area the place younger folks love spending time is an strategy that will get a thumbs up from Kara Brisson-Boivin, director of analysis at MediaSmarts, a Canadian non-profit group centered on digital and media literacy.
“It’s building in those educational moments and opportunities within their game play,” she stated from Windsor, Ont.
“They’re going to embrace those educational opportunities all the more, because it’s already within the spaces and the online activities that they’re engaged in.”
WATCH | Tips on navigating on-line areas amid misinformation:
What ought to college students take into account once they’re scrolling by way of their on-line feeds? Researchers Timothy Caulfield and Kara Brisson-Boivin together with CBC Kids News journalists Ainara Alleyne and Arjun Ram share some ideas.
For greater than 20 years, MediaSmarts has been working a complete analysis research into younger Canadians’ attitudes and behaviours on digital expertise and the web. One current report particularly explored older teen and younger grownup perceptions and issues about misinformation and disinformation in on-line platforms and communities.
Though respondents reported having fun with the interactive vibe and immersive feeling of their favorite areas, additionally they revealed how typically they’ve come throughout misinformation and disinformation. They’re conscious of how this type of content material connects with on-line hate — misogyny, racism, homophobia and extra, Brisson-Boivin famous — and younger folks wish to see extra transparency, effort and motion from decision-makers to fight it, inside the platform itself.
“Young people want to be in this space. They like the vibe. They don’t want to have to completely leave it,” she defined, noting the problem of pausing or withdrawing to fact-check data in one other area or exterior supply.
Brisson-Boivin believes build up digital literacy information from an early age is one other vital strategy to combating misinformation, whether or not college students are researching for varsity or scrolling for leisure.
“Introducing this at as early an age possible is absolutely critical. I have a six year old [and] we talk quite frequently about the kinds of content we’re seeing online: what is real and what is imagined, how we can know these things,” she defined, noting a current dialog sparked once they encountered an incredible “upside-down waterfall” video.
Some fast web analysis carried out collectively decided it wasn’t actual, however cleverly crafted footage.
“There are lessons and opportunities as a family or as a household where you can embrace this with really young children,” Brisson-Boivin stated, including that as college students mature into teenagers and adults, further approaches could be launched, as an illustration discovering the unique supply, authenticating data by way of respected retailers, using fact-checking instruments, websites and specialists, and so forth.
“It is something that we all need to continually be learning and practicing and developing.”
Students ‘hungry for this data’
Notable myth-debunker Timothy Caulfield agrees, saying that it could actually even be so simple as taking just a few seconds to suppose or mirror on one thing you see on-line. “If you get people to take that beat, they’re more likely to adopt a critical thinking perspective, less likely to believe misinformation, less likely to share misinformation,” stated the University of Alberta professor and Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy.
“A lot of it happens in the moment with the extreme headline, that funny meme. But if you just get people to reflect and think about accuracy … that action alone can make a difference.”
The bestselling writer and standard public speaker thinks educating youthful children to “put on their thinking cap and really kind of investigate” should transition into introducing teenagers and younger adults to extra advanced approaches exploring “the nature of the evidence being used” to make arguments.
“I’ve had the opportunity to talk to kids of all ages and they’re hungry for this information. They recognize that this is an issue: they’re not naive. They know that the spread of misinformation is a real issue. So they want strategies,” he stated in Edmonton.
Rather than turning college students into “hyper-skeptics,” he likens educating college students crucial considering to educating them to suppose like a scientist: making use of purpose and taking a look at a physique of proof. He refutes those that consider that this skills-building is about brainwashing anybody. “We’re not talking about the content here. We’re talking about giving people skills — neutral skills — that will allow them to go out and assess the information environment.”
Caulfield feels misinformation is “one of the defining issues of our time” and among the many biggest challenges we at the moment face.
“It’s a generational challenge, so that means we really need to teach our youth, the children, how to spot and counter misinformation. And this means giving them the skills that will endure over time.”
