With the rise of social media, the amount of incorrect information available has never been higher – sensationalised, attention grabbing, rage inducing headlines abound from Facebook feeds to more reputable news outlets. How do we teach our children to navigate all the mis-information to find the truth behind the headlines?

Anyone with access to a phone can publish their thoughts, opinions and lies online with ease and reach a staggeringly huge audience from the comfort of their front room.  Teaching children to be aware that not all media content is reliable is an essential life skill.  You can help by encouraging them to ask these questions when looking at online content (from project look sharp):

• Who made this?
• Who is the target audience?
• Who paid for this? Or, who gets paid if you click on this?
• Who might benefit or be harmed by this message?
• What is left out of this message that might be important?
• Is this credible (and what makes you think that)?

Older children (and us adults!) could use these tips from Merrimack College for checking online information:

• Look for unusual URLs or site names, including those that end with “.co” — these are often trying to appear like legitimate news sites, but they aren’t.
• Look for signs of low quality, such as words in all caps, headlines with glaring grammatical errors, bold claims with no sources, and sensationalist images (women in bikinis are popular clickbait on fake news sites). These are clues that you should be skeptical of the source.
• Check a site’s “About Us” section. Find out who supports the site or who is associated with it. If this information doesn’t exist — and if the site requires that you register before you can learn anything about its backers — you have to wonder why they aren’t being transparent.
• Check Snopes, Wikipedia, and Google before trusting or sharing news that seems too good (or bad) to be true.
• Consider whether other credible, mainstream news outlets are reporting the same news. If they’re not, it doesn’t mean it’s not true, but it does mean you should dig deeper.
• Check your emotions. Clickbait and fake news strive for extreme reactions. If the news you’re reading makes you really angry or super smug, it could be a sign that you’re being played. Check multiple sources before trusting.