Students, Fake News, and Critical Thinking

There has been a lot going on in the United States these past few months, and much has been said about the proliferation of “fake news” covering recent events, especially on social media sites such as FaceBook and Twitter. A recent study by Stanford University found that the majority of students they surveyed from middle school through college could not distinguish between a native ad sponsored content and a real news story. And the Wall Street Journal reported that “[m]any students judged the credibility of newsy tweets based on how much detail they contained or whether a large photo was attached, rather than on the source.” (WSJ, 11/2016) When shown a tweet with a photo of mutated daisies purportedly from the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011, nearly 40% of the students in the Stanford study argued that the photo provided pictorial evidence of nuclear radiation at the power plant. Wow. Credibility judged on whether or not there’s a pretty picture. Only 20% of the students refuted the evidence and questioned the source of the post or the photo itself.

The study points out the need to teach information literacy along with other scholastic skills. Currently, the overall ability of young people to reason about information found on the Internet is “bleak.” (Stanford History Education Group.) In the “old days,” people could rely on editors, publishers, and other fact checkers to determine if information presented was reliable. These days, not so much. Michael Lynch, a philosopher who studies technological change, observed that the Internet is “both the world’s best fact-checker
and the world’s best bias confirmer—often at the same time. (Lynch, New York Times, 3/2016.)

Educators need to address how students gather and interpret information online on social and other digital platforms. False and biased information comes from many sources, including deceptive advertising, satirical websites, and misleading partisan posts and articles. (Schellenbarger, WSJ. 11/2016.)  Students need to be savvy about choosing and believing their Internet sources, and we need to instill in them a healthy skepticism. As the Stanford study says, the ability to sort facts from fiction is imperative for civic online reasoning.

I teach a lesson on source evaluation to English classes that uses the CRAAP test method: how to determine the currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose of information presented, whether found on the Internet or elsewhere. This year, I have a new commitment to instill in my students the skepticism necessary to wade through the phony, the bogus, the counterfeit, the misleading, the you-name-it fake news. I want them to step back and question things, not just consume everything mindlessly from their social media sites. I want them to develop the sleuthing skills needed to discover information that is well-researched and well-thought out. I want them to become curious, thoughtful, well-rounded members of society. I have my work cut out for me.

Your Career May Depend on You Quitting Social Media

That title is a paraphrase of a byline from an article on the New York Times website. It also appeared in print in the Business Section on page 8 on November 20, 2016. Cal Newport, the author of the article, claims that by continually monitoring your social media sites, you reduce your ability to achieve success in your working life. “Professional success is hard, but it’s not complicated,” he says. “The foundation to achievement and fulfillment, almost without exception, requires that you hone a useful craft and then apply it to things that people care about.” In other words, it requires an ability to put distractions aside and work. The ability to put aside distractions in order to focus on a specific task is becoming a hot commodity in the professional workplace. Social media can diminish that ability because it is by its very nature addictive. Your brain craves that instant hit of recognition, to the detriment of deep, unencumbered thinking.

“The idea of purposefully introducing into my life a service designed to fragment my attention is as scary to me as the idea of smoking would be to an endurance athlete, and it should be to you if you’re serious about creating things that matter,” says Newport. He purposefully does not have any social media accounts–he’s a computer scientist who writes books and also runs a blog. His conscious decision to remove himself from the world of social media in order to focus more completely on his work is counter to what many think of as a way to find opportunities they might otherwise not discover, and to cultivate contacts that will help with future job promotion.

I’ve seen the diminishment of the ability to concentrate and focus firsthand among my high school students. They can’t go more than a few minutes without checking in with the monster in their hand. The idea that “smartphones” (quotations mine) are here to stay and we have to work with them in education is a double-edged sword. We got along fine without them 10-15 years ago. And I’m not saying that there’s any way to go back–the addiction to these attention-sucking monsters affects more than 80 percent of young adults who say they “couldn’t live without” their electronic device.

At some point, of course, I hope the pendulum will swing back, and that people will find a way to cure their addiction and re-engage with each other and with their work. Employers are looking for people who can collaborate with one another to solve problems, and it doesn’t mean via Skype or Snapchat. Face to face communication will remain a dynamic part of working life, as will being able to work independently and deeply on projects. Hopefully (I seem to use that work a lot), people will be able to set aside their instant connection devices and live up to their employer’s expectations. I shudder to think what will  happen if they do not.