Raising Kids Who Can Tell Fact from Fiction

How should we teach children to think critically about information and news?

How can we teach kids to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information? Between real and fake news, paid content and journalism, lies and truths? I consider this to be one of the most crucial questions facing our society right now, because we’re learning — over and over and over again — just how much damage can be done to a democracy when people can’t think critically. I dug into the issue for a feature that’s just been published in the February issue of Scientific American, and I’d like to share some of the key insights. (Like many of my newsletters, this one is part essay, part advice. First, I’ll discuss the issue and the research; then I’ll give you pointers for fostering critical thinking at home.)

There’s no question that we need to be teaching kids critical thinking skills in elementary and middle school. This is when kids first encounter the Internet and YouTube (YouTube has been called “The Great Radicalizer” because of its propensity to recommend extreme, conspiratorial videos). And kids are often none the wiser when they encounter questionable content, as I wrote in my piece:

Age 14 is when kids often start believing in unproven conspiratorial ideas, according to a study published in September 2021 in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Many teens also have trouble assessing the credibility of online information. In a 2016 study involving nearly 8,000 U.S. students, Stanford University researchers found that more than 80 percent of middle schoolers believed that an advertisement labeled as sponsored content was actually a news story. The researchers also found that less than 20 percent of high schoolers seriously questioned spurious claims in social media, such as a Facebook post that said images of strange-looking flowers, supposedly near the site of a nuclear power plant accident in Japan, proved that dangerous radiation levels persisted in the area.

If you’re thinking I don’t need to teach my kids these skills because they’ll learn them at school, think again. Illinois just became the first U.S. state to require all high schoolers to take a (one, single) media literacy class. And while 13 other states have some kind of media literacy laws in place, many are vague and essentially useless — requiring, say, that schools simply include a list of resources on an education department website.