I am not the most perfect parent but imagine I am like many of them in the digital age. When I hear children and disinformation mentioned in the same breath, I get anxious wondering how the internet might be influencing them. The problem is not that you have not employed adequate parental control on the computer they use. It is that with so many sources of information online it is difficult to sort out what is fact and the half-truths or lies. It is true that not all of our children and young people are online, but they are as impressionable and will at some point have to contend with the effects of disinformation that can corrupt a carefully nurtured worldview and values, inviting harm to them. This is a well-acknowledged problem and parents have their role, but not all have the knowledge or aptitude to effectively guide the children on matters internet. Then there are the adolescents and young people who think they know more than their parents but can’t tell whether the blue ticks on an influencer’s name means is a person to trust or not with the information she spews. The question therefore is, what information and media literacy structures do we have in place to better prepare the children and young people to deal with the information distortions in fake news? Here I am thinking schools and the education policy that anticipates an evolving society to equip citizens to thrive in it. It may be necessary to first recall that there are two types of fake news, misinformation and disinformation. An example of misinformation can be that story you share thinking it is true when it is not and therefore misleading. Though it might negatively impact the person receiving it, it was not the intention to harm or manipulate. Disinformation, on the other hand, is false information that is created and shared to deliberately cause harm or manipulate the person who receives it. Fake news is promoted by spammers and trolls, politicians, even advertisement agencies and governments, all of whom are well versed on how the web works. They are often aided by social media platforms that employ artificial intelligence to amplify the information, whether it is misleading and harmful or not, for profit. While there are tools one could find on the internet to help children deal with disinformation, they may not adequate. Critical thinking, it turns out, isn’t helping in the fight against misinformation. According to digital literacy experts, the way we’re taught from a young age to evaluate and think critically about information is fundamentally flawed and out of step with the chaos of the current internet. It is possible, as suggested in one formula, a student can quickly check whether an argument is true compared to mainstream sources and determine whether the purveyor of the doubted information is a plausible authority. Probably save for some private schools, it is doubtful our public schools have tried to adopt any such formulas even where computer classes are offered. Most of them still don’t have internet, while the vast majority of children have no wherewithal to get online at home or outside it. This however is the digital age and they will get online sooner or later as schools get upgraded. In the meantime, even many of those already online are inadequately prepared to deal with the harmful aspects of the internet. While some of the young people are savvy enough online to deal with fake news, many more are not. If it is not already under consideration, it is time our schools had information and media literacy curriculum that will help them understand the social and economic contexts that influence how information is created and circulated. Recall that the purveyors of fake news manipulate the social and economic infrastructure and will get more sophisticated as the internet evolves in complexity. More than a mere formula therefore it will better prepare the young people if they should be taught how traditional and new media such as the internet works.
