In today’s environment, media literacy is more important than ever. But the sparse research on the topic shows us that kids really struggle with identifying legitimate sources.
This Stanford study found that 82 percent of middle school students couldn’t distinguish between a news story and one labeled as sponsored content. Another 80 percent assumed that an unsourced photo was proof of a misleading claim.
So how can teachers help? The following ideas can help students learn to recognize bias and evaluate their sources more carefully.