In today’s digital age, social media has become a primary source of news, entertainment and general information for many young people. While social media offers the convenience of quick updates or easy access to global events, it has also introduced the significant challenge in distinguishing fact from fiction. Misinformation seen online could be a photoshopped image or “deep fake,” biased reporting, or excessively dramatic headlines or “clickbait.” The frequent spread of false or misleading information online, whether small or largely impactful, has led to the rise of independent fact-checking organizations.
For teenagers, social media is often the first place they encounter breaking news. While this communication is vital to connecting younger generations with others that they wouldn’t otherwise have such an opportunity to interact with, the downsides can rewrite the truth. Anyone can post anything online, and students shouldn’t believe all posts they encounter without looking at other reliable news sources first.
Jaya Pally ‘25 said, “I usually see a lot of stuff on Instagram and TikTok, but I’m always pretty skeptical about it, because I know how fast misinformation spreads on social media, so I always fact check with sources that are proven to be creditable.” Chris Blancuzzi ‘26, who had no social media accounts, said,“Usually I see my news when I browse through the Associated Press website or when I see a notification from Apple News.”
Students at MBS are given fact-checking habits in various courses. Ms. Kaitlyn Meehan, the librarian in the MBS Anderson Library, said, “in general, I would always say you should look at at least two additional sources.”
“I tend to see news pop up either when I first go on the internet just on Safari or on Youtube just in my recommended page,” Caleb Kasmin ‘28 said. He continued “if [the topic is] interesting to me, I will [fact check]. I’ll just go on the internet and look for sites that I can trust. If it’s not interesting, I’ll just leave it alone.”
The social-networking company Meta, which owns most notably Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, has recently announced that they are discontinuing their use of third party fact-checking systems and instead leaving their platforms’ communities to sort what information is true or false on their own. Meta claims that this will facilitate more freedom of speech and allow the company to instead focus their restrictions on more illegal or inappropriate content.
Mr. Paul Fisher, who has been teaching a variety of computer science, data related, and 3D graphic classes for the last 30 years at MBS, said that this decision will likely have both positive effects and negative consequences. He said, “in the past, you were dealing with written and published works, so there was a certain amount of gatekeeping. There would be editors and things got vetted. Now that can be good and bad, right? The gatekeepers could’ve been keeping information out that would’ve been more widespread, so one of the plus sides of things like social media is less of that.“
However, by removing its fact-checking systems, Meta may be inadvertently facilitating the spread of misleading or entirely false content. Mr. Fisher said, “one of the serious downsides that we’re seeing now is that everything becomes equal. Truth now becomes what you hear the most frequently or what you hear the loudest unless you’re willing to do the due diligence to figure out whether something’s real. And even that can be hard, because where do you go?”
As Meta and the world work to balance free expression with addressing misinformation, every day social media users have started to play a more vital role in evaluating information and checking facts. With social media being a primary news source for many, distinguishing between viral stories and verified information remains important.
