The tech giant Google launched the Be Internet Awesome program in 2017 to teach kids how to make the most of the internet while staying safe online and now, that includes learning how to tell if something is “fake news.”
Google added six new media literacy activities to the Be Internet Awesome curriculum. In addition to teaching kids how to determine whether or not a source is credible while surfing the net.
The term “fake news” may be relatively new, but people have been purposefully spreading false information disguised as fact for millennia. The internet and artificial intelligence just made these lies far easier to create and spread and much harder to combat.
Kids today need a guide to the internet and media just as they need instruction on other topics,” educator Amy Mascott wrote in a Google blog post.
“We need help teaching them about credible sources, the power of words and images and more importantly, how to be smart and savvy when seeing different media while browsing the web.”
Many adults still have trouble grasping that concept, but if Google’s media literacy curriculum can ensure that the adults of tomorrow understand it, there’s a chance the people who would use the internet to spread their lies might eventually find it’s no longer the effective medium it once was.
In other words, the death of fake news might just be the birth of a generation that’s immune to it.