CA lawmakers advance bill to help teens combat fake news
In the age of so-called “alternative facts” and the amplification of false stories online, California educators will now have more resources to help students become discerning news consumers.
A bill approved by state lawmakers last week requires the state Department of Education to provide media literacy resources on its website by next July, including instructional materials and professional development programs for teachers.
“I know that (students) are bombarded with information every single day, and part of that is because it's readily available to them on their phones,” said Casey Elsa, a Santa Rosa High School English teacher and advisor to the student newspaper, The Santa Rosan.
Introduced by state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-napa, SB 830 is awaiting the governor's signature. The bill was inspired by a 2016 Stanford University study that found 82 percent of middle school students struggled to distinguish advertisements from news stories.
“The rise of fake and misleading news is deeply concerning. By giving students the proper tools to analyze the media they consume, we can empower them to make informed decisions,” Dodd said in a press release.
Carol Marie Martin, a Santa Rosa High freshman in Elsa's newspaper class, recalled the spread of false news during the 2016 presidential election. Back then she was a seventhgrader at Rincon Valley Charter School Sequoia Campus.
“For some reason, kids were very involved with it,” said Martin, 14. “People were trying to spread fake news online.”
A Buzzfeed News analysis cited in the bill found that in the months leading up to the 2016 election, the top 20 false news stories at the time generated more online attention than the top 20 real news stories.
The false stories online had about 8.7 million shares, reactions and comments on social media, while the real news stories had about 7.6 million shares, reactions and comments, Buzzfeed found.
Martin sticks to local news outlets — her parents read The Press Democrat with her regularly — and she checks national news on CNN. She credits her parents and middle school social studies teachers for showing her how to think critically about news sources and how to decipher between native advertising — designed to appear as news — and a real news story.
But she still gets confused sometimes, like when she sees an online link about celebrity rumors. And she supports the Dodd bill that recently passed.
“I definitely think it would be helpful, especially for younger grades like middle school,” she said. “I think kids need to be much more aware of fake news.”
The Santa Rosan's coeditor-in-chief, Katie Cederborg, 17, thinks the bill has good intentions in theory, but might not make as much of a difference in practice.
“It's great we're trying to educate students on what to look for with fake news … but it's not realistic that students will do that on their own,” said Cederborg, who noted she learned to develop good sources in her AP government class, as well.
Leilah Sterk, another freshman in Elsa's newspaper class, thinks more media literacy in schools would be helpful. She watches Fox News with her parents, uses Instagram and Snapchat on her smartphone and occasionally reads news on the web.