Last school year, the Townsend Harris guidance department visited social studies classes throughout the school to do a presentation on digital citizenship. In this presentation, they talked about the dangers of blindly believing the news you see on social media. Although this is an example of the school’s effort to inform students about rooting out misinformation on social media, the school still needs to do more on educating Harrisites. 

Surveys show that about 90% of teenagers ages 13-17 use social media. According to a survey done by Deloitte Insights, about 50% of Gen Z teens get their daily news from social media and messaging services, while 40% said they get their news from search engines, such as Google. Compare these statistics to 30 years ago, when social media did not exist. Teens would have to be influenced either by newspapers, the nightly news, or their parents’ opinions (which would have been influenced by the same factors). 

Social media platforms feed off of engagement, both positive and negative. Once an algorithm figures out which types of posts get more engagement from you, then your feed will be flooded with posts echoing the same or similar ideologies. From here, it is easier for young teenagers to be radicalized at a faster rate. 

In the 2023 fiscal year, the National Institute of Justice identified research on the role of communications in both the promotion and countering of extremist content. Being identified as a role in radicalization, the youth are an even easier target of this type of content. Young minds are impressionable; they can be easily manipulated to believe a particular ideology through exposure. 

The impressionability of young teenagers is exactly why we need to educate students about this in freshman year. If social media can instill ideas in young teenagers, then so can positive skills in analyzing them and potential misinformation.

Additionally, little is being done by platforms to mitigate the effects of their own algorithms. On March 13, Meta announced that they will be ending 3rd party fact-checking services on all of their platforms.  Meta owns Instagram and Facebook; a 2023 Pew Research study found that 68% of teens aged 15 to 17 say they use Instagram, and 45% of teens aged 13 to 14 use the platform. As a replacement, Meta has begun rolling out community notes on their platforms in the United States. However, the accuracy of community notes is more questionable than that of fact-checking services because  anyone can leave a note regardless of their qualifications on a certain topic as long as people agree that the note is helpful. 

By removing verified fact-checking services, there is the possibility that the level of misinformation teens are exposed to may worsen. There is no guarantee that misinformation will be flagged as false anymore, and we can not expect corporations to look out for the well-being of their young users. Now, we must expect teens to do their own evaluations of what they see online in a more in-depth way than ever before. 

There are different ways that dedicated teaching about social media can happen at THHS. Since much of this centers on teaching students to evaluate social media content about current events, social studies courses can aim to reserve some time during the school year to teach specific lessons on verifying news sources. Additionally, English classes can work in lessons about the literacy side of social media literacy, teaching students to make use of their reading skills to evaluate social media posts and learning to distinguish neutral reporting from opinionated and unverified claims. Lastly, increased interventions from the guidance department to teach students about their social media footprint would be beneficial.  

Students will be able to apply what they have learned from these proposed lessons outside of the classroom almost constantly. In today’s world, it is impossible to escape digital media in any form, especially social media, regardless of where you are. Incorporating these topics into freshman year courses whenever and wherever possible would be sufficient enough to give students the basis of the skills that they would then be practicing constantly.

Some may argue that this type of curriculum is already available to students in various elective courses, such as the AP Capstone and Science Research programs, which focus on research skills that help students evaluate reliable sources. 

The keyword here is “elective.” There is limited space,  so not everyone will take such courses.  These electives also fall short by coming too late in a student’s high school career. Students will not have adequate time to practice their refined analytical and critical thinking skills outside of the classroom before it is time for them to make their own decisions. 

Overall, better digital literacy amongst teenagers will protect them from misinformation in a world where there is limited concern from companies for their online safety. A  deliberate, focused set of interdisciplinary lessons can achieve this, aiding in the fight against misinformation and radicalization.