Young people learn a new conspiracy theory every week on social media but many schools do not teach media literacy

How often do you come across a conspiracy theory?

Maybe one time, when you’re flipping through the TV channels and you land on the episode “Ancient Aliens.” Or maybe when a friend from high school shares a questionable meme on Facebook.

How confident are you in your ability to tell truth from fiction?

When you’re young, you can be exposed to conspiracy theories and countless other pieces of misinformation as often as every day while scrolling through your social media feed.

That’s according to a new study by the News Literacy Project, which also found that young people struggle to spot fake information online. This comes at a time when media literacy education is lacking for many students, the report finds, and their ability to distinguish between objective and biased information sources is weak. The findings are based on responses from more than 1,000 13- to 18-year-olds.

“Reading the news is critical to preparing students to be active, critical thinking members of our public life — which should be one of the primary goals of public education,” said Kim Bowman, senior research manager for the News Literacy Project and author of the report. in an email interview. “If we don’t teach young people the skills they need to evaluate information, they will remain in a critical situation for the rest of their lives. Story reading education is as important as core subjects like reading and math.”

Telling Truth from Fiction

Almost 80% of young people who use social media say they see content about conspiracy theories in their online feeds, with 20% seeing conspiracy content every day.

“It includes narratives such as the Earth is flat, the 2020 election being rigged or stolen, and the dangerous COVID-19 vaccine,” the News Literacy Project report found.

While teenagers may not believe every conspiracy theory they see, 81 percent of those who see such content online say they believe one or more.

Bowman noted, “However dangerous or harmful, these narratives are designed to engage and satisfy deep psychological needs, such as the need for community and understanding. Being a conspiracy theorist or believing a conspiracy theory can be part of one’s identity. It’s not really a label that one would avoid sharing with others.”

At the same time, the report found that media education is low. Only six states have guidelines on how to teach media literacy, and only three make it a requirement in public schools.

Less than 40% of youth surveyed reported having media literacy instruction in the 2023-24 school year, according to the analysis.

Reliable Sources

As part of collecting data for the report, young people were asked to try to distinguish between different types of information they might encounter online. They were also challenged to identify real or fake images and judge whether the source of the information was reliable.

The study asked participants to identify a series of articles such as advertisements, opinions or news pieces.

More than half of teens failed to identify the branded content — the part that looks like a fleshed-out story on the Washington Post’s news app — as an ad. About the same number did not realize that the “commentary” heading in the article was about the author’s opinion.

They did better at seeing Google’s “sponsored” results as ads, but nearly 40 percent of teens said they thought it meant those results were popular or high-quality. Only 8 percent of the youth classified the information correctly in all three examples.

In another exercise, teenagers were asked to identify which of two pieces of content about Coca-Cola’s plastic waste was more credible: a press release from Coca-Cola or an article from Reuters. The results were too close for comfort in the report, with only 56 percent of young people choosing the Reuters article as the most reliable.

Brand recognition could have played a role in young people’s decision to choose Coca-Cola over Reuters, Bowman said, a feeling that the more recognizable company was more trustworthy.

“Whatever the reason, I think that news organizations that engage young people on social media and build trust and recognition there may have the power to move the needle on a question like this in the future,” Bowman said.

Fact Check

Where young people felt confident spotting hoaxes was with visuals.

Two-thirds of survey participants said they would do a reverse image search on Google to find the original source of the image. About 70 percent of teenagers can correctly distinguish between an AI-generated image and a real one.

To test the youth’s ability to spot false information, they were asked if a social media photo of a melting robot was “strong evidence that hot temperatures in Texas will melt robots in July 2023.”

Most of the young people answered correctly, but almost a third still believed that the picture alone was strong evidence that the robot melting claim was true.

Bowman said that the fact that there is no difference in the performance of students when the results are analyzed according to their age makes him wonder if the youth “at all ages have received the message that they cannot always be believed when it comes to the images they see. see them online.”

“Their radars seem to be there when it comes to identifying forgotten, distorted, or completely fabricated images,” Bowman continued. “Especially with recent developments and the availability of artificial intelligence technology, I wonder if it might be harder to convince them of the authenticity of a real and verified image than to convince them that the image is somehow fake.”

When it comes to sharing on social media, young people expressed a strong desire to make sure their posts contain the right information. So how do they check the truth, since a number of young people actively follow the news or take media literacy classes?

Among young people who said they verified news before sharing, Bowman said they were engaged in reading, which he described as “a quick internet search to investigate the source of a post” and the method used by professional fact-checkers.

Given a random group of teenagers, Bowman said they’re likely to use less efficient methods of judging a source’s credibility, based on things like a website’s design or URL.

“In other words, previous research shows that young people tend to rely on outdated techniques or sophisticated methods to determine the credibility of a source,” explains Bowman. “If schools across the country use quality media literacy, I’m sure we can challenge old ideas about how to determine credibility that no longer work in today’s information environment, and instead, teach young people the research-based methods of credibility we have. you know the job.”

Staying Informed

Although conspiracy theories are common among young people, they do not equip them with the knowledge to stop them.

Young people are divided on whether they trust the news. Just over half of young people said journalists do more to protect society than harm it. About 70 percent say news organizations are biased, and 80 percent believe news organizations are too biased or the same as other online content creators.

A minority of young people – only 15 percent – seek news to stay informed.

The survey also asked young people to list the media sources they trust to provide accurate and fair information.

CNN and Fox News received the most approval, with 178 and 133 mentions respectively. TMZ, NPR and the Associated Press tied with 12 mentions each.

Local TV news was the most trusted news platform, followed by TikTok.

Young people agree on at least one thing: 94 percent say schools should provide some level of media literacy.

“Young people know better than anyone how much they are expected to study before graduation, so for many young people to say that they can accept another requirement on their already full plate is a big deal and a huge compliment to the importance of the media. literacy,” said Bowman.

Throughout the study, students who had any amount of media literacy education performed better on the survey test questions than their peers. They are more likely to become active news seekers, trust news outlets and feel more confident in their ability to fact-check what they see online.

And, paradoxically, students who receive media literacy at school report seeing more conspiracy theories on social media – perhaps because they have sharper media literacy skills.

“Young people who have at least some media literacy, who are relevant to the news, and who have a high standard

trust in the news media are more likely to report seeing conspiracy theory posts on social media at least once a week,” according to the report. “These differences may indicate that young people in these subgroups are more likely to see these types of posts or that their social media algorithms are more likely to provide them with these types of posts, or both.”

This article compiled at EdSurge. EdSurge is a non-profit newsroom that combines education in real journalism with research. Sign up for them newsletters.