Researchers have long been fascinated by how children learn to trust others and determine the truthfulness of what they are told. However, there’s been less focus on how young kids discern truth from falsehood when they first interact with social media.

This focus is shifting as digital platforms increasingly integrate into children’s daily lives. By age nine, about one-third of American kids have already used social media, and by their teenage years, it often becomes their primary source of information about the world. This brings the challenge of distinguishing real from fake content online, a task complicated by AI chatbots that continuously disseminate false information.

One straightforward approach could be to shield children from these falsehoods, but finding a completely safe digital environment is challenging. For instance, YouTube Kids came under fire in 2017 when parents discovered that the platform’s filters had failed to catch sexually explicit and violent content, leading to increased parental control measures on the site. Another strategy is “prebunking,” which involves warning children about potential misinformation they may encounter, similar to how adults are cautioned about fake news related to climate change or vaccines.

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An alternative, more proactive strategy accepts that children will inevitably spend time online and instead encourages them to become adept at verifying facts independently. At the University of California, Berkeley, researchers are exploring whether children can be taught to identify and counter misinformation effectively.

Evan Orticio, a graduate student working with psychologist Celeste Kidd at Berkeley, and his team conducted a study to examine children’s natural ability to fact-check. They recruited 122 children aged four to seven from local parks for a study that involved a game-like fact-checking activity. Orticio explained, “We wanted to see if children could vary their skepticism based on the reliability of information they’ve encountered previously and apply that to deciding how thoroughly to fact-check new information.”

Participants were given tablets displaying content styled like e-books or search engines and were shown various statements accompanied by images.

Statements like “Hippos swim in water” and “Hippos swim in outer space” were shown to the children, who then had to decide whether they believed the statements were true while viewing corresponding images of animals like zebras or hippos. Then, they viewed a page showing 20 space creatures called “zorpies,” with one showing three eyes. The children were to verify if the statement “all zorpies have three eyes” was accurate by choosing how many zorpies to examine more closely.

Children exposed to more false statements during the initial phase were more diligent in their fact-checking, taking more time and seeking additional evidence before accepting the claim about the aliens. In contrast, those exposed to fewer false claims did less fact-checking. These findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour last October, were also supported by computer simulations of the games.

Orticio suggests that overly sanitizing children’s media exposure might inhibit their ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood. Instead, teaching them to critically evaluate information from an early age is becoming increasingly recognized as crucial. For instance, Finland’s public schools now include media literacy lessons that start in preschool.

Judith Danovitch, a psychology professor at the University of Louisville not involved in the study, praised the research methods as “clever” and the results as a promising basis for developing strategies to help children navigate information. However, she noted that more research is necessary to refine these methods into practical applications and to determine if the benefits persist across different contexts.

Orticio hopes to expand the reach of their fact-checking game to platforms frequented by children, such as social media and educational sites like YouTube Kids. He emphasizes that teaching children to apply critical thinking in safe, real-world digital contexts is essential, as their skepticism tends to be specific to the situations they encounter.