Children ages four to seven demonstrate natural fact-checking skills when put to a test with zebras and space aliens
Social scientists have long studied how children develop a sense of trust in others and how they judge whether someone they are talking to is telling the truth. Less attention has been devoted to how young children judge what is true or false in their early encounters with social media. That has started to change as the online world has become a routine fixture of children's lives. By the time they reach the age of nine, one third of American children have come into contact with at least one social media platform. By the teen years, social media has become young people's main source of news about the world around them. An immediate challenge for these neophytes is distinguishing between what is real and fake online—a struggle exacerbated by AI-based chatbots that deliver relentless streams of untruths. One obvious solution is to isolate a child from such lies and distortions, but a safe refuge has proved elusive. The YouTube Kids channel faced parents' outrage in 2017, when inappropriately sexual, lewd and violent content turned up after the platform's filters labeled it child-friendly. (YouTube Kids responded by increasing parental controls.) Another possible approach involves "prebunking": inoculating kids to misinformation by letting them know that what they are about to see is false. Similar techniques are used to alert adults about falsehoods related to climate change or vaccinations. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. A different and perhaps more inventive tack entails accepting the inevitability of children spending time online and prodding them to become their own fact-checkers. Researchers at the…