Learn news literacy this week Instagram teen safety | Social media regrets
Top picks
Instagram has introduced major changes for its teen users. Image credit: kovop / Shutterstock.com.
Instagram is attempting to become safer for teens by introducing new privacy features and restrictions. Over the next couple of months, the social media platform says it will make all accounts of underaged users private, turn off notifications for teen accounts between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., prevent direct messages from accounts that teen users don’t follow and limit the spread of “sensitive content” such as videos of fights or cosmetic procedures. Teens opening new accounts will need to verify their age and kids under 16 will need parent permission to turn off these new settings.
The changes come amid growing concerns and lawsuits over Instagram’s effects on teen safety and mental health. According to a U.S. surgeon general advisory last year, 95% of Americans age 13 to 17 use social media.
Engage: Talk to the kids in your life about these changes to Instagram. Will these changes make the platform safer? What more should social media platforms do to protect kids? If they are under 16, how do they feel about needing parent permission to change settings? How often do they see content on social media that they believe is harmful?
After false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, spread over the last few weeks, local schools and government offices have received at least 36 bomb threats, prompting numerous evacuations. Some residents fear for their safety. “We’re living the danger that misinformation and created stories leads to,” Springfield City Manager Bryan Heck told The Wall Street Journal.
The origin of the pet-eating rumor isn’t entirely clear. The Journal cites a Facebook post by a Springfield woman, a thirdhand account that was later disavowed. Vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance of Ohio repeatedly shared the falsehood — even after city officials told him they were false. Former President Donald Trump also repeated them during the Sept. 10 presidential debate, which was viewed by more than 67 million people — although a debate moderator fact-checked him in real time.
Sociologists say fact-checking may not be enough to counter misinformation due to “moral flexibility” — when voters accept inaccurate information because it aligns with their political and moral interests, or a perceived larger truth.
Engage: Watch this NLP TikTok and the one-minute video on slide 16 of this RumorGuard® deck to learn the process of debunking this outrageous claim, including by using reverse image search. Share it with the young people in your life and ask them about the role fact-checking plays in responsible social media use.
Propagandists are weaponizing uncertainty over the authenticity of visuals in the age of generative artificial intelligence to instill something one expert is calling “deep doubt”: the tendency to distrust all photos and videos as potentially synthetic. This weaponization of skepticism is a tactic designed to deny reality and sow public doubt in the existence of authentic evidence. This may lead to lack in accountability of public figures who might want to discredit damaging photos, videos and audio recordings.
Engage: Chat with the kids in your life about “deep doubt” and its implications. How might public figures and their supporters take advantage of this public uncertainty to evade accountability or spread misinformation? How could we counter it? What’s the difference between healthy skepticism and deep doubt?
NO: This video does not show a Ku Klux Klan member attending a rally for former President Donald Trump.
YES: The man in the robe is a self-described “troll” and a Trump critic who posts his stunts and satirical activities at public events to his social media accounts.
YES: The official newspaper of the KKK endorsed Trump in 2016, but his campaign quickly denounced it.
NewsLit takeaway:
If a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s important to know who is writing them.
Recognizing when online posts are playing into preconceived biases is an important skill for navigating social media, where purveyors of misinformation are frequently spreading out-of-context content to influence or reinforce political opinions. Sensational posts like this one are designed to elicit immediate emotional reactions. Refraining from making instant judgments allows time to critically examine the claims. In this case, no one else in the crowd was promoting material associated with the KKK, and misrepresenting such associations to the KKK is a common misinformation theme — two facts that should give people pause about the validity of the content.
Presenting a false claim — in this case, that former first lady Melania Trump filed for divorce — as if it originated from a well-known publication is a common tactic used to spread misinformation. While these pieces of impostor content seem convincing at first, as they appear to be reports from a credible source, they can be detected and debunked in a few simple ways.
Investigate further before sharing any news headlines or social media posts that circulate in the form of apparent screenshots unaccompanied by links.
Go to the news source referenced in a suspicious post to see if the outlet truly filed the report in question. In this case, Newsweek has not published any articles claiming that the Trumps are getting divorced.
Check additional sources. Do a web search for the alleged claim and see if any other reputable outlets have filed similar reports.
Meta banned Russian state media outlet RT from its platforms for “foreign interference” just days after U.S. officials announced new sanctions against the outlet for engaging in covert Russian influence campaigns.
Four out of 10 young adults in the U.S. now get news on TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center.
🎵 “Tik tok, on the clock, but the party don’t stop.” Actually, it might stop for the TikTok app, which faces a nationwide ban in January unless it persuades a federal court to overturn legislation or finds a new buyer without ties to China.
Misinformation is rampant on WhatsApp, a private messaging app, and there’s no good way to moderate it. One expert calls it the Wild West online.
Vice President Kamala Harris is not a communist, but an AI-generated image of her dressed as one went viral among some Latinos — particularly exiles who fled from countries like Cuba or Venezuela and who hold genuine fears of communist regimes.
Although there is broad scientific consensus around the safety of mRNA-based COVID vaccines, Florida’s top health official published a bulletin urging residents to avoid them. Experts say the bulletin contains false claims.
Sara Burningham’s father has been dead for 14 years — but that didn’t stop an AI-generated image of him from showing up on X.
This Gen Z journalist drove over an hour for a three-minute interview with a high school football coach. It could’ve been done over Zoom, but she found it was worth it for the community connections that deepened her storytelling.
How do you like this newsletter?
Love this newsletter? Please take a moment to forward it to your friends, or they can subscribe here.
Sign up to receive NLP Connections (news about our work) or switch your subscription to the educator version of Get Smart About News called The Sift®here.
Check out NLP's Checkology virtual classroom, where you can learn to better navigate today’s information landscape by developing news literacy skills.
