“Fake news” is a term that I haven’t heard in my life until recently. When typing research papers for school I understood that some sources may be more reliable than others, but I wasn’t really aware that there are sources and articles that are completely fake. In class we watched a short YouTube video about times in history when fake news was published and believed by many people. It discussed a newspaper article being published in the 1830’s about aliens being found on the moon, and recently in 2016 a story was circulated online about the democratic party being involved with a sex trafficking ring that operated out of a pizza shop in Washington D.C. One of my classmates and my professor both said that they fell for a website dedicated to the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, which is a completely made up animal!
Fake news has been around for as long as people have been around to tell fake stories, but I feel like our society has just recently focused on the importance of spotting fake news. I have fallen for my fair share of fake articles and videos with intriguing titles known as “clickbait” and capturing images. I remember reading an entire article by the media company “The Onion” that was about the true and very deep meaning behind the movie Finding Nemo and the character Dory who suffers from memory loss. I told someone about this article only to find out this media company only posts satirical articles for peoples amusement and contains no real information. I found it crazy that there are companies that only post fake news and I wondered how many fake articles I have read thinking they were real!
People throughout history, my professor, my classmates, and myself have all believed in news that contains false information. Since this is such a common occurrence, I think it is important to focus on teaching children in schools how to distinguish real from fake news. We could do this by implementing workshops in school curriculum at a young age so that students do not grow up believing in loads of false info! Another YouTube video we watched in class stated that over 80% of middle schoolers and young adults don’t recognize what sources are fake and get most of their news from social media. I think by implementing workshops that teach students how to search the web for true information and spot false information will change those statistics.
I remember having library classes in high school that taught me how to use databases to find reliable articles for research papers and projects. Although it is crucial to know how to use databases in high school, it should also be taught how to use Google to find websites that are reliable and useful for school papers and projects. Rather than not allowing the use of Google, students should be taught how to correctly find websites and articles online!
The last two questions discussed in class this past Monday were,
Will the amount of fake news increase of decrease in the future?
Will people begin to ignore or identify more fake news?
I really don’t believe there will be any less fake news in the future because it has been around for so long that I don’t see it disappearing any time soon. Although, I do believe people will begin to ignore these made up stories or become better at identifying incorrect information. It has gotten to the point where fake news is almost everywhere and we come across it everyday when scrolling through social media. Hopefully this problem continues to be talked about more in society and schools begin to teach younger generations how to depend on reliable sources and not fake ones.