The Sift: Special issue: Gen Z’s take

April 27, 2026

Misinformation

An educator's guide
to news literacy

April 27, 2026

Hi there,

Our newsletter intern, Katherine Weaver, is taking over part of today’s Sift.

Katherine recently graduated from the University of Chicago, where she wrote for her campus newspaper. This fall, she plans to attend graduate school at Northwestern University, specializing in health, environment and science journalism.

In this issue:

Katherine shares her experience learning how to verify facts as a student and offers tips for productive and civil conversation about misinformation.
High school students share how they speak up with family and friends.
New classroom activity: Our team has put together Google Slides that allows students to role-play different scenarios involving misinformation in social settings.

We hope you enjoy today’s special issue! And please take our Sift reader survey. It only takes a few minutes, and you can enter to win one of 15 $100 Amazon gift cards.

—The Sift team

In this issue

Student spotlight | Classroom activity: Speaking up

Civil conversation in the classroom — and in life

Throughout my life and academic career, I’ve seen firsthand the value of civil conversations about misinformation, anchored in the understanding that no one is immune to falsehoods.

Until I was 16, I believed the Civil War was about “states’ rights.” In my home state of Louisiana, that idea is far from radical — and the idea has taken root elsewhere: A 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly half of Americans believe this too.

My parents tried to correct this false belief of mine, but their protests felt vague next to the polished arguments I had heard defending the myth.

The person who finally changed my mind was my 11th grade AP U.S. history teacher. At the beginning of our first class on the Civil War, before anything else, she posed the question: Was the Civil War about states’ rights or slavery?

Instead of telling us the answer, she gave us copies of each state’s secession declarations. Again and again, in document after document of primary sources, slavery was named plainly and explicitly as the central cause. It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t debatable. And I was forever impacted not just by the change in my beliefs, but also in how well my teacher handled the situation. She was patient, kind and didn’t make anyone feel stupid for having believed something false.

As a student journalist at the University of Chicago’s campus newspaper, dispelling rumors became a large part of my work. A lot of the techniques I used as a student reporter — and my history teacher used — can be found in NLP’s “How to speak up without starting a showdown” infographic. Misinformation can be so compelling: Far too often, it’s easier to believe than the truth. Thinking that my ancestors had been so dedicated to the horrible institution of chattel slavery that they were willing to fight and die for it was abhorrent to me. It was easier, and more comforting, to think that there was a nobler reason for the war. I’m grateful my teacher took the time to patiently review the evidence.

Here are three things I’ve learned about helping to correct false beliefs, from my own experiences discarding them to my work as a student journalist and, now, as an intern at the News Literacy Project:

Be civil.Telling someone that they’re straight-up wrong puts them on the defensive immediately. Asking them how they came by the information helps it feel like a discussion rather than a confrontation.
Lay out the facts. This is what was so effective about my history teacher’s approach. The facts she explored with us directly contradicted what I thought was true, and I couldn’t ignore that.
Be patient and persistent. Sometimes, a person convinced of a falsehood will just not change their mind. That’s OK. There’s plenty of value in just starting the conversation. Plus, you never know who might overhear and realize there’s more than one side of the story.

To practice these tips, the Sift team has put together a new resource: classroom activity slides for students to role-play confronting misinformation in social settings. They can use the tips I’ve shared here or come up with their own.

Anyone can fall for misinformation in today’s information environment, which is polarized, overwhelming and rife with fakes and falsehoods. Approaching these difficult conversations with patience and persistence not only builds trust with the people around us but also builds our own capacity to think carefully and critically about what’s true — and what isn’t.

⭐ NLP Resource:

Infographic: “How to speak up without starting a showdown”

Student spotlight

We asked high school students from West Virginia and California how they speak up when family and friends share viral misinformation. Here’s what they said.

Grishma Jain, 17

As a news editor at her high school newspaper in California, Grishma often encounters misinformation related to the topics she covers. She finds that it’s best to make discussing misinformation a collaborative exercise, not a confrontation.

If someone is sharing misinformation, she’ll ask them, “How did you get to know this? Or, how do you know if it’s true?” Then, she’ll ask the person to show her where they found the information or look together to see if they can verify it, allowing them to determine for themselves if it’s true. Grishma said these kinds of approaches are more engaging than “telling them off or shutting them out.”

Hailey Hans, 19

Hailey is a high school senior in West Virginia. She is enrolled in a media literacy class and has a family member who shares AI videos with her, believing them to be real. Her approach is to talk with them directly about how to tell when a video is real or not. Though she aims to speak in a civil way, conversations can get heated. “If they get mean or angry then you just let it go,” she said.

Liliana Trupiano, 16

Liliana is a sophomore at the same school as Hailey. One of her family members often puts family photos into AI tools, and she worries about her likeness in other contexts. Her approach to discussing misinformation or manipulated content? Prioritize simply listening to each other.

“When you have a conversation with someone who doesn’t have the same viewpoint as you about a certain subject, it’s important if you’re not gonna understand each other, you at least listen,” she said. “It’s nice to hear each other.”

Lily Rocknich, 18

”I think that being civil is very important in conversations because if you’re just fighting, you’re not really getting anything done,” said Lily, a high school senior also from West Virginia.

Lily has found that studying news literacy has increased her awareness of potential misinformation. She recently saw a startling post on Instagram, which she realized may have been engineered to provoke a reaction. She looked to see if there was a source, and she couldn’t find any trace of outside evidence.

“That’s just not good because people can be making their thoughts off of fake information. It’s just not good for the world,” she said.

Classroom activity: Speaking up

A slide image titled “Speaking up: Practicing civil conversation when confronted with misinformation,” shows an illustration of two people sitting and talking.

The “Speaking up” slide deck pairs with the News Literacy Project’s “How to speak up without starting a showdown” infographic. The slides include tips for encouraging civil conversation and eight scenarios for students to role-play responding to misinformation in a social setting.

Learning objectives:

Reflect on and practice ways to respond to misinformation in social settings through role-playing scenarios.
Explore ways to discuss misinformation in a civil and productive manner.

Here are some examples of scenarios students can use for practice: