How often do you come into contact with a conspiracy theory?
Maybe on occasion, when you flip through the TV channels and watch an episode of “Ancient Aliens.” Or maybe when a friend from high school shares a questionable meme on facebook.
How confident are you in your ability to distinguish fact from fiction?
If you're a teenager, you might be exposed to conspiracy theories and a host of other pieces of misinformation with a frequency equal to every day while you scroll through your social media feeds.
That is according to a new study by the News Literacy Project, which also found that teens have difficulty identifying false information online. This comes at a time when media literacy education is not available to most students, according to the report, and their ability to distinguish between objective and biased sources of information is weak. The findings are based on responses from more than 1,000 teens ages 13 to 18.
“News literacy is critical to preparing students to become active, critically thinking members of our civic life, which should be one of the primary goals of a public education,” said Kim Bowman, senior research manager. of the News Literacy Project and author of the report. in an email interview. “If we do not teach young people the skills they need to evaluate information, they will be at a civic and personal disadvantage throughout their lives. News literacy is as important as basic subjects like reading and math.”
Tell facts from fiction
About 80 percent of teens who use social media say they see content about conspiracy theories in their online feeds, and 20 percent view conspiracy content every day.
“They include narratives such as that the Earth is flat, that the 2020 election was rigged or stolen, and that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous,” the News Literacy Project report found.
While teens don't believe every conspiracy theory they see, 81 percent of those who watch such content online said they believe one or more.
Bowman noted: “No matter how dangerous or harmful they may be, these narratives are designed to be engaging and satisfy deep psychological needs, such as the need for community and understanding. Being a conspiracy theorist or believing in a conspiracy theory can become part of someone's identity. It is not necessarily a label that an individual is going to avoid sharing with others.”
At the same time, the report found that the bar for delivering media literacy is low. Only six states have guidelines on how to teach media literacy, and only three make it mandatory in public schools.
According to the analysis, less than 40 percent of teens surveyed reported receiving any media literacy instruction during the 2023-24 school year.
Credible sources
As part of collecting data for the report, teens were asked to try to distinguish between different types of information they might find online. They were also challenged to identify real or fake photographs and to judge whether a source of information is credible.
The study asked participants to identify a series of articles as advertisements, opinions or news.
More than half of teens failed to identify branded content (a news-like article about plant-based meat on the Washington Post news app) as an ad. About the same number did not realize that an article with “commentary” in the title was about the author's opinion.
They did better by recognizing Google's “sponsored” results as ads, but about 40 percent of teens said they thought that meant those results were popular or high quality. Only 8 percent of teens correctly categorized the information 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 Coca-Cola press release or a Reuters article. The results were too close for comfort, with only 56 percent of teens choosing the Reuters article as more trustworthy.
Brand recognition might have influenced the teens' decision to choose Coca-Cola over Reuters, Bowman says, feeling that a more recognizable company was more credible.
“Whatever the reason, I think news organizations that engage young people on social media and build trust and recognition there could have the potential to turn the tide on an issue like this in the future,” Bowman said.
Checking the facts
Where the teens felt confident detecting deception was in the images.
Two-thirds of study participants said they could do a reverse image search on Google to find the original source of an image. About 70 percent of teenagers could correctly distinguish between an ai-generated image and a real photograph.
To test the teens' ability to detect misinformation, they were asked whether a photo on social media of a melting traffic light was “strong evidence that high temperatures in Texas melted traffic lights in July 2023.”
Most of the teens answered correctly, but about a third still believed that the photo alone was strong proof that the claim about the melting traffic lights was true.
Bowman said the fact that there were no differences in student performance when the results were analyzed by age makes her wonder if teens “of all ages have gotten the message that they can't always believe what they see when they look at themselves.” It's about the images you see.” see online.”
“Their radars seem to be alert when it comes to identifying manipulated, distorted or completely fabricated images,” Bowman continued. “Especially with recent advances and the availability of generative ai technologies, I wonder if it may be more difficult to convince them of the authenticity of a photo that is actually real and verified than it is to convince them that an image is fake in some way.”
When it came to sharing on social media, teens expressed a strong desire to ensure their posts contained correct information. So how do they verify the data themselves, given that a minority of teenagers actively follow the news or have taken media literacy classes?
Among teens who said they fact-check news before sharing it, Bowman said they practice lateral reading, which he described as “a quick Internet search to investigate the source of the post” and a method employed by professional fact-checkers.
Given a random group of teenagers, Bowman postulated that they would most likely use much less effective ways of judging the credibility of a source, based on factors such as a website's design or URL.
“In other words, previous research shows that young people tend to rely on outdated techniques or superficial criteria to determine the credibility of a source,” Bowman explained. “If schools across the country implemented high-quality news literacy instruction, I'm confident we can debunk old notions about how to determine credibility that are no longer effective in today's news landscape and instead teach young people research-backed verification techniques we use. know how to work.”
Actively stay informed
Although conspiracy theories arise commonly among teenagers, they do not necessarily arm themselves with information to avoid them.
Teens are divided on whether they trust the news. Just over half of teens said journalists do more to protect society than harm it. Nearly 70 percent said news organizations are biased, and 80 percent believe news organizations are more biased or about the same as other online content creators.
A minority of teens (only 15 percent) actively seek out news to stay informed.
The study also asked teens to list news sources they trusted to provide accurate and fair information.
CNN and Fox News received the most endorsements, with 178 and 133 mentions respectively. TMZ, NPR and the Associated Press also scored 12 mentions each.
Local television news was the most trusted news outlet, followed by TikTok.
Teens agree on at least one thing: A whopping 94 percent said schools should be required to offer some degree of media literacy.
“Young people know better than anyone how much they are expected to learn before graduating, so for so many teenagers to say that they would appreciate one more requirement on their already overloaded plate is a great achievement and a great endorsement of the importance of a media system. literacy,” Bowman said.
Throughout the study, students who had some level of media literacy education performed better on the study's test questions than their peers. They were more likely to be active news seekers, trust the media, and feel more confident in their ability to verify what they see online.
And, in a strange twist, students who receive media literacy in school report seeing more conspiracy theories on social media, perhaps precisely because they have sharper media literacy skills.
“Teenagers with at least some instruction in media literacy, who stay up to date with the news, and who have a high level of
“People who trust the media are more likely to report seeing conspiracy theory posts on social media at least once a week,” according to the report. “These differences could indicate that teens in these subgroups are more adept at detecting these types of posts or that their social media algorithms are more likely to serve them these types of posts, or both.”
