The Hidden Danger of Social Media: Fake News
Because students rely on social media for news, the article argues that schools need to do more to teach them to tell true from false online.
Media literacy for students has moved from checklists to lateral reading. Stanford's randomized study and Pew's 2025 teen data show where to start.
In this January 2017 piece, Elizabeth Osborne explains why fake news spreads on social media and gives educators a short checklist for teaching students to question what they read. A section added in 2026 follows Osborne’s text and covers what research has since shown about teaching media literacy for students, and how the sources teenagers use have changed.
Social media, for better or worse, is a part of 21st-century culture. And for America’s youth, it’s deeply ingrained in their experiences and viewpoints. They don’t know a world without Instagram, SnapChat and Google. It’s simply their reality.
Social media connects users across the world, allowing them to share ideas, thoughts and content. While the dangers of social media are prominent in teachings to youth, the entire spectrum of what exactly is dangerous may not be covered. Students are warned of sexual predators online and the consequences of posting scandalous photos or inappropriate comments. But what have we taught them about being able to discern what’s true and what’s false?
Social media has become a source of news, especially with today’s youth. This generation doesn’t buy newspapers or even visit news websites. Most metrics show that visits to the home pages of mainstream news are down considerably. Content that is shared on social media platforms, whether it is from other individual users or the media, has become the bulk of what many in our society consider news. The Pew Research Center has determined that 62 percent of adults receive the majority of news via social media. This has become the norm. So do social media platforms have a responsibility to debunk fake news? And how can educators equip students with the right skills to distinguish between truth and fiction?
Fake news isn’t new. It’s what tabloids have been pedaling for years. Social media now provides a new channel with more credibility. Consider that users may be more likely to click on a news story if it was shared by a peer, friend or family member. Because we trust others more than organizations, we are more likely to believe the accuracy of news and share it without even thinking about the source or its basis in facts.
Some fake news is simply clickbait, which means a sensational headline or image is used to drive users to a website. After you click, the actual content may have little to do with the headline. Those using fake news in this way have one objective, generating online advertising revenue.
The recent U.S. election was a gold mine for those using fake news to make money. A recent BuzzFeed News investigation found that over 140 pro-Trump websites were based in Macedonia and run by teenagers. Macedonia is a small Balkan nation that seems an unlikely place for news from the U.S., but millions of Americans clicked, shared and liked the articles from these sites, which had little to no validity. These young people have no interest in politics. Their interest is in making money.
Thus when there is money to be made, there are conflicts. FaceBook and Google have reacted to the critics about their role in publishing and promoting fake news. Google News recently allowed a false headline to be prominently featured on their page. Because Google and social media sites deliver what is shared and clicked on, the legitimacy of the content isn’t a factor. Google now says it won’t allow fake news sites to use its ad-selling software, yet details on enforcement aren’t clear. But are any of these sites in a position to become an adversary of fake news?
FaceBook has answered critics and argued that less than one percent of news published on their site is fake. Many disagree, saying that fake content is widely viewed. FaceBook uses a news feed algorithm to weed out unsubstantiated news. However, this algorithm also works to provide users with more of the same. So if you click, like or share a post like this, related content will pop up in your feed. FaceBook has proclaimed it’s not in the news business How they balance this very thin line will continue to play out, but there is no doubt that FaceBook and others like it have the ability to inform, misinform and influence readers.
Although most students don’t consider FaceBook their social media platform; it has become a site for their parents. However, FaceBook, by far the largest social media site, still has a presence in their lives. Educating students on the prevalence of fake news on the site can, in turn, help them spread awareness to adults in their lives or their communities.
BuzzFeed also launched an investigation into FaceBook news. It looked at news from mainstream media, far left sources and far right groups. The analysis found that even though the far right and far left groups weren’t fake sites, there was still plenty of falsehoods and mixes of true and misleading information. Those these types of sites don’t necessarily fall under fake news; there’s still bias and unsubstantiated information being published. So if one article has both factual and unproven parts, how will this type of article be filtered? Could the future include some kind of scale to measure truthfulness? Or maybe, it’s a new algorithm that works to verify stories. Some college students recently developed such an algorithm in a hackathon but no comment from FaceBook if it’s a viable option.
Social media doesn’t filter, or fact check what is published. It doesn’t have journalistic standards. These platforms seem to want to counter fake news and are working together to do so. However, it’s still a bit of the wild West, and unfortunately many readers don’t have the critical thinking ability to determine what’s true.
These fake news sites play on the fears and anxieties of users. And often, the rhetoric sounds so familiar; of course, readers think it to be true. Mainstream media and journalists have even repeated some of these stories, only to later report it wasn’t true. If they aren’t fact checking then who is?
Before social media and the Internet, students writing articles or research papers needed to cite statistics, quotes, and information. There was work involved to ensure what was written was true. Now we live in a world where people simply trust anything published online. They don’t even question it. And herein is the challenge. How can educators encourage and foster investigative perspectives and a thirst for truth? Educators have a responsibility to inform and educate students on how to discern when something is based in fact, pure propaganda or simply sensational clickbait.
Here are some guidelines to use when talking to students
- Check the URL. It may seem like it’s a story from CNN or ABC but check carefully. Hover over before clicking.
- Use Wikipedia as a source. Wikipedia is the world’s encyclopedia, created and updated by individuals across the globe. Wikipedia has standards: content must be neutral, verifiable by reliable sources and can’t be “original” thoughts. Wikipedia even has an Education Program, encouraging students and educators to contribute.
- Search for the story using Google or another search domain. Is the story on multiple sites? Is there proof already that it’s been debunked.
- Use a fact checker site like Snopes.
- Consider the source and investigate it. Is it legitimate?
Students need to be prepared for the “real” world. And that real world may contain a lot of falsehoods. They must be empowered to be curious and inquisitive toward headlines and stories that appear to have unsupported angles. Students need to understand that real journalists have ethical standards and objectivism, something completely devoid in the world of fake news. There are real dangers in the digital world; some are readily apparent, but it’s the seemingly benign that can ultimately do the most damage. Prepare your students for a bright future, one in which they have the tools to recognize truth over deception.
Media literacy for students in 2026: from checklists to lateral reading
Elizabeth Osborne wrote above that educators have a responsibility to teach students how to tell fact from propaganda and clickbait. Media literacy for students has since become a field with tested lessons, and the evidence points to a change in method. The checklist Osborne offers, which includes looking at the web address, searching for the story elsewhere and investigating the source, is still a reasonable start. Research from Stanford University suggests where the weight should go.
Leaving the page to check the page
The Civic Online Reasoning curriculum, the program Stanford researchers tested in the experiment below, is free and teaches students to ask three questions about online information: who is behind it, what the evidence is, and what other sources say. Its lessons include one called “Intro to Lateral Reading.” Lateral reading means leaving a page to see what other sources say about it, instead of judging the page by how it looks. The curriculum page says it rests on peer-reviewed research and on observations of professional fact checkers, though it does not give dates or results for that research.
A randomized experiment gives a sense of how much a short unit can do. The Stanford Graduate School of Education reports that about 500 high school students in a required government course across six high schools in an urban Midwestern district took part in spring 2019, and the study was published online in the Journal of Educational Psychology on April 19, 2022. Half the students followed the usual curriculum. The other half received six 50-minute lessons, under six hours in total, and their teachers received professional development. Students who received the lessons were twice as likely to spot questionable websites as before the instruction, and by the end of the semester they scored twice as well on a test of spotting dubious websites, but they still earned only half of the possible points.
Two limits matter when planning. The study covered one district, and Google.org funded it. The result is encouraging because the gain came from a small amount of class time, and it is also a reminder that one unit will not finish the job. Students need to use the habit in several courses across a year.
Where students get information now
Osborne’s article describes a world of Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, and cites a 2016 Pew finding that 62 percent of adults got most of their news from social media. A newer source describes today’s platform mix. The Pew Research Center’s Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025, published December 9, 2025, surveyed 1,458 U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 between September 25 and October 9, 2025. About 9 in 10 teens said they had ever used YouTube, and TikTok and Instagram were each used by roughly 6 in 10 or more. Facebook, the platform Osborne’s article centers on, was used by 31 percent. Roughly two-thirds of teens (64 percent) said they ever use an AI chatbot, and about 3 in 10 use one daily.
The Pew page does not report what teens use chatbots for or how they judge the answers, so this section draws no conclusion about accuracy. What follows is the writer’s reasoning, not a research finding: with 64 percent of teens reporting that they use a chatbot, the three questions in the Civic Online Reasoning curriculum can be asked of a chatbot’s answer as of a web page. Who is behind it, what evidence it offers and whether other sources agree are still the right questions.
What a school can do this year
- Add one lateral reading lesson to a course that already requires research. Government, history and science are natural homes, and the three questions fit on an index card.
- Retire advice that tells students to trust a site because of how it looks. Osborne’s checklist item about hovering over a web address is useful, but a site can have a plausible address and still be unreliable.
- Treat Wikipedia as a place to start looking. Students can read its references and follow them to the original sources.
- Teach the habit across subjects and revisit it. The Stanford result of about half the possible points after one unit suggests repetition is needed.
- Tell families what is being taught. Students practice the questions at home when families know them too.
For related reading, the edCircuit digital citizenship guide places media literacy among the wider skills of living online, the grade-by-grade AI literacy guide covers teaching students about AI tools, and the earlier article on edtech and media literacy offers classroom ideas.
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