Like most 17-year-olds today, Myles Jackson gets his news primarily from social media sites like TikTok and YouTube.
The Arlington, Virginia, resident says he’s most drawn to topics that interest him personally: stories about racial justice and, lately, the 2024 election. Last month he watched his first-ever presidential debate on TV with his mom.
“Trump is trying to prove to Kamala [Harris] that she's this person, and Kamala is trying to prove to the people that Trump is this person, instead of just having the same goal,” Jackson told Scripps News of his debate takeaways.
Unlike most teens, however, Jackson’s high school government class is helping him learn how to evaluate the news he reads online — as new research shows large proportions of American teens lack access to that kind of education.
“You can't really just believe anything,” Jackson said. “Before you just decide to be gullible, do your own research and see how, like, reliable it is.”
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In Jackson’s senior-year U.S. and Virginia government class at Wakefield High School, students learn about how the political system operates by following the news. Their teacher Patricia Hunt says she thinks it’s crucial that the next generation better understands how to sift through the murky online marketplace of misinformation.
“It behooves us as educators to be sure that they're able to distinguish between propaganda and opinion, and a news piece that is well sourced, that's balanced, that has expert testimony,” Hunt said.
The work is timely. An Oct. 21 study from the News Literacy Project — a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization working to promote media literacy education in K-12 schools — sought to provide wide-ranging quantitative data about how American teens engage with news, their levels of trust in journalism and their ability to discern fact from fiction.
Some findings were troubling, said CEO Charles Salter.
“Anyone who's worried about our democratic system, our civic dialog, education, or even the future of journalism, the future of media, should really be concerned,” Salter said. “We have this generation that's coming up that doesn't understand journalism, it doesn't trust it, and it doesn't value it as it should.”
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Among the more alarming takeaways: eight in ten teens say they’ve encountered conspiracy theories online, and 81% are inclined to believe at least one, the report found. Moreover, fewer than 10% of teens report high levels of trust in news media, and nearly half say they believe journalism does more harm to democracy than good.
“They come to class with some misconceptions about the reality of our government, what it can and cannot do, what kind of powers it has, who's behind decision making,” Hunt noted. “They fall prey to viral rumors, just like the rest of us do.”
In her classroom, Hunt utilizes a News Literacy Project program called “Checkology,” a free platform with lesson plans for educators to teach news literacy in the classroom. During a Monday morning lesson on election misinformation, for example, students were presented with different types of media — satire, opinion, advertisements and even AI-generated content — and asked to determine the veracity of each source.
“Sometimes those, like, AI-generated stories are kind of convincing, but you got to dive deeper to figure out whether it's really true or not,” reflected Wakefield senior Keyon Tiggle.
The new study revealed some more optimistic findings, too. While only 39% of students reported having any media literacy education in the classroom this year, 94% said they thought such lessons should be a requirement.
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Right now, just three states — Illinois, Connecticut and New Jersey — require news literacy education in high school, though Salter’s group is working to change that.
“Our mission is to ensure that all students in all 50 states eventually will be guaranteed news literacy education before they graduate high school,” he said.
As with adults, conversations about politics can get tricky at times. But program administrators and educators stressed that the goal wasn't to push students in a particular direction, but rather help them better understand what they’re already encountering online.
“I provide the kids with the information, and they can draw their own conclusions,” Hunt said.
“We teach students how to think about news and information, and not what to think about specific sources,” echoed Salter.
The students, meanwhile, say they’re thrilled to be involved in such conversations.
“It, like, opens your eyes when you learn about this in school,” Tiggle said. “Back in the day, my parents, they didn't really get the education that we got about the things that are going on now.”
“It’s my future,” added 17-year-old Shehran Kabir. “I'm more dragged towards different topics than older people, but it doesn't mean that we don't care.”