Teens overwhelmed by media sources

Our view: Future voters need to learn to discern fact from fiction

Only 18 percent of teens can distinguish a real news article from an ad labeled “sponsored content,” according to recent research by Standford University, which surveyed 7,804 students.
Let’s turn that figure around: that means that 82 percent of teens cannot distinguish news from advertising.
Either way you look at it, that trend is disturbing.
The recent election campaign season was rife with accusations of media bias — the so-called liberal media trashing the Republicans and the so-called conservative media going after the Democrats.
Just recently, there was a report of a father-son team that used their social media accounts to promote baseless claims regarding one of the two main-party presidential candidates.
Teens are already confounded by what’s real and what’s not as they peruse their Facebook, Twitter and other “news feeds.” Teens have moved away from the mainstream media, such as newspapers, radio and news magazines, and instead have chosen social media as their main sources of news information.
Compound that with the fact that many social media users are taking to the Internet to spread baseless “news” stories, it’s no wonder that many people in general, and teens in particular, have no clue what’s true and what is not.
There are some “fact-checking” websites, such as Snopes.com, that people can use to check out “trending” news items. However, teens, in particular, don’t doubt what they are reading, seeing and hearing enough to wonder if it is true or not. They simply assume that it must be true, or it wouldn’t be on the Internet.
And mainstream journalists aren’t helping the cause. They see their readers, listeners and viewers slipping away, and are jumping on the social media bandwagon in a desparate attempt to keep a toehold on the news market.
Remember the famous, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial published in the New York Times? A father had told her daughter to pose her question about the reality of Santa Claus to the editor of the Times because, the father said, if it’s in the Times, it must be true.
It’s time for parents and teachers to show their children how to sort out fact from fiction.
And it’s time for mainstream journalism to get back to that ideal … that if they publish it or air it, it must be true.
Once journalists recapture that trust in their integrity, they will regain their readers and viewers. People are desperate for the truth, and they need to find it somewhere.
Hopefully, our traditional media will rise up and reclaim their standard of being the source of fair, accurate and unbiased news reports.
— L.C.