Overview:
In an era where misinformation spreads faster than truth, educators must become the first line of defense by teaching media literacy and empowering students and their families to think critically about what they see online.
When we, as educators, think about the devastating impact of misinformation, we think about our students–the conversations that we overhear in hallways, classrooms, and the cafeteria, parroting back sound bites of information and descriptions of videos that they have seen on social media platforms like Tiktok. In 2024, Pew Research analyzed teens, social media, and technology, and found that “roughly six-in-ten teens say they use TikTok and Instagram” almost constantly.
We know that, by and large, social media is how many of our students learn about and understand the world; how an algorithm, designed to exploit their conscious and subconscious curiosities, exposes them instantaneously to unchecked, unverified, and often untrue information; and how, for many, that information becomes their truth until proven otherwise.
Yet, it is not just our student population who absorbs their information in this fashion–their parents, guardians, and role models, too, have embarked on a years-long shift away from trusted news outlets. According to a different study on the habits of social media users of all ages, Pew Research found that “around half of TikTok users (52%) now say they regularly get news there.” And it is here, in the silo of social media, that peoples’ ideolgoies–and, most crucially, their fears–are systematically validated, exploited, and exacerbated, with catastrophic consequences.
In the fall of 2020, the ringing of my work phone reverberated across an otherwise empty classroom. My high school students were attending class remotely, logging in (or not) virtually via Google Meets. As I sat alone at my desk, teaching to the one or two faces that I could see in a checkerboard of otherwise blacked-out student screens, I set my microphone to mute, posted an away message, and answered.
The mother on the other line was calling in regards to her child who was, like so many, struggling in a remote learning environment–his grades were slipping, as was his attendance, and she simply did not know where to turn for support. Throughout our phone call, the focus of our conversation shifted slowly away from her son’s struggles and toward her own challenges and concerns. She, like so many parents and caretakers navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, was also struggling to help her children with remote schooling, all while working from home full-time and, as it turns out, navigating the treacherous torrent of misinformation on social media.
In a trembling, fearful voice, she confided in me that, even though she knew that sending her children to school for hybrid learning would help them academically, she was afraid of the government taking her children away.
Stunned into silence, I scrambled for an adequate reply. I asked her where she received this information. She said she read a Facebook post claiming that if she sent her unvaccinated children to school and they were to contract COVID, the governor of our state would send an unmarked white van to take her children away for quarantine.
Although I was certain that this was untrue, I frantically searched the internet for the faintest whisper of evidence to support her claim: an adjacent headline, a trail leading me back to the source, the point of fracture between truth and fiction that has now turned into a gaping chasm. I found none. And it was at that moment that I fully understood the threat of misinformation and its relentless grip–not only on the perception of reality amongst many parents in the community in which I taught, but, by association, on my students’ lives, and on their futures, as well.
Today, we are experiencing another wave of conflicting health information that closely resembles the 2020 COVID vaccination battle, and, again, our students are at the center of the debate. On September 22, 2025, President Trump announced that acetaminophen, or Tylenol, is linked to rising rates of autism. He then instructed pregnant women not to take the pain reliever and “tough it out,” as well as for all parents to stop giving it to their children.
The same day, the FDA released a public letter to physicians regarding the announcement. Among rhetoric supporting Trump’s claim, the letter also states that a direct link between acetaminophen and autism is inconclusive: “To be clear, while an association between acetaminophen and autism has been described in many studies, a causal relationship has not been established and there are contrary studies in the scientific literature.” The letter concluded with the assertion that “acetaminophen is the safest over-the-counter alternative in pregnancy among all analgesics and antipyretics.”
However, on the official White House website, the Trump administration anticipated pushback, “Predictably, the Fake News immediately went into frenzied hyperventilation with their usual smears, distortions, and lies.”
This tactic has many, particularly parents who are supporters of Trump, very uncertain who to trust regarding medical advice. In an article published by NPR, director of Boston University’s Center for Autism Research Excellence advises parents, “Are they going to listen to people who are not physicians, who have no expertise in autism, or are they going to turn to their medical providers, their treatment providers and ask them what their view of the current science is? That’s what they should be doing.”
Truth, at its core, becomes more endangered on a daily basis. We are living in an era in which our sitting president–now in his second term–as well as his cabinet and a majority of his political supporters, have fostered a fierce distrust and even volatile hatred of what they call “Fake News,” or the mainstream media, classifying unfavorable media coverage as lies and misinformation.
At the same time, the Trump administration has commonly spread misinformation, even using it to justify sweeping governmental changes, like the dismantling of the Department of Education, claiming that “U.S. schools are “ranked 40 out of 40” in educational outcomes compared with other countries, while the U.S. “ranked No. 1 in cost per pupil.” According to Factcheck.org, “Neither claim is accurate.” This has created a cascade of harmful effects on students across the nation, like budget cuts that are forcing school districts to lay off educators.
For many, this sowing of distrust has become difficult to navigate. When we no longer know where to turn for information that is trustworthy, we often turn to each other. Impressionable teenagers with less media literacy experience spend “nearly five hours daily on social media,” according to the American Psychological Association. And it is in these isolated, virtual spaces, where the ethos of camaraderie drowns out the noise of opposing viewpoints. This, in my experience, is where misinformation becomes most dangerous–where parents are convinced that their governor will take away their children.
As a mother and global citizen, it would be an understatement to say that I am concerned about the threat of misinformation; In truth, I struggle to articulate my foreboding sense of hopelessness. Yet, in my role as an educator, I have the great responsibility of providing young people with the tools, skills, and intrinsic curiosity of a critical thinker. Today, I have integrated media literacy into every facet of my curriculum–one solution that can have positive outcomes for students.
A central tenet of media literacy is the understanding that all media is inherently biased because it was created by someone–even artificial intelligence chatbots–who, intentionally or unknowingly, embed their own values into the messaging. Because of this, media literacy recommends that we fact-check and verify any new information that we learn, especially before we share it with others. This can be as true for seemingly benign TikTok videos as privately funded research or broadcast news.
According to Penn State, “In an analysis of more than 35 million public posts containing links that were shared extensively on [Facebook] between 2017 and 2020… around 75% of the shares were made without the posters clicking the link first. Of these, political content from both ends of the spectrum was shared without clicking more often than politically neutral content.” In a different study, researchers at MIT investigated the differences in how verifiably true or false information is diffused online and found that false news travels six times faster than truthful news.
I believe that the terrified mother sobbing on the other end of the phone back in 2020 could have been spared her anxiety and confusion had she not read misinformation from a source that she trusted on Facebook. Most importantly, I firmly believe that her children would have been more successful in school during this challenging time if she had not been led to believe that sending them to school may result in their kidnapping by the government.
It is imperative to carefully evaluate the credibility of the information we receive before believing, creating, and sharing media. We must behave as stewards of truth in every one of our exchanges on social media, guarding it and repelling falsehoods through the application of media literacy. Stop before sharing, investigate the source, find recurring coverage, and trace all claims to original context. And–my students love this one–when in doubt, use the craap test!
