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No matter how smart and educated you might be, you can still fall prey to false information on the internet. It’s generally best to be a bit skeptical and critical in this day and age.
There’s so much information being shared and reshared on the internet and social media that it’s easy to get lost in the flood of noise and fake news. So, knowing how to spot (un)reliable sources is key. It’s a core part of media literacy.
Broadly speaking, you can do two main things to check the reliability of a claim you find online. You can double-check the information by cross-referencing what’s reported in a number of sources. Or you can focus on researching the reliability of the source that shared the piece of information in the first place.
The first strategy is more time-intensive, which is why the second one is so useful.
Though all sources make mistakes from time to time, they are not all equal. Some are far more reliable and transparent than others.
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As a rule of thumb, higher-quality sources will credit their sources, explain where they got specific information, correct their errors, disclose any conflicts of interest, etc. They will also clearly mark what’s meant to be an opinion piece versus reporting about events.
On the flip side, unreliable sources usually like to present their opinions as facts for the sake of some sort of agenda.
They also might intentionally misinterpret or outright make up facts and statistics, refuse to provide information about the data they used, use clickbait headlines, or exaggerate current events for the sake of views and clicks.
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The BBC urges people to make sure that they get their news from official news sites and journalists, not just social media. “Journalists are held to account for what they report, and any story in a news outlet will have gone through checks and an editor.”
Besides, you can actually look through a journalist’s reporting history and see whether their work meets your standards for quality or falls short of them.
“It’s always a good sign if you can find where the news has come from and clearly see the facts behind the piece. It’s also good to ask yourself if what the source is saying sounds believable. If it appears a bit out of this world or too good to be true, then the chances are that it might well be,” the BBC writes.
Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association explains that if you want your children to grow up with good media literacy skills, you should foster a sense of natural skepticism in them.
“Teens often already question what they see online. Build on this tendency by exploring their thinking: ‘What makes you trust certain creators more than others? How can you tell when something might not be showing the full story?’ Share your own experiences of discovering misleading content and how you learned to verify information,” the APA suggests.
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Tambo Art is a huge-scale living artwork created in rice paddies by planting different colored rice varieties in precise patterns so that when the plants mature, an image emerges across the field. It originated in the small village of Inakadate in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, in the early 1990s as a way to revitalize rural agriculture and community life. It has since grown into a celebrated land-art form, both a tourist attraction and a way for communities to reclaim the canvas of the rice field and tell stories through rice stalks instead of paint.
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Moreover, you can motivate your kids to turn information verification into a habit. The more they embrace critical thinking, the better, so they don’t fall prey to misinformation or AI-generated content.
Encourage them to look at what other sources have to say about the topics they’re interested in.
Furthermore, teach them about how certain content creators can use emotional triggers to boost engagement from their audience. Teach them how to recognize when someone might be manipulating their feelings.
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Every year in Seoul, hundreds of people gather for one of the most unusual competitions in the world, the Space-Out Contest. Created in 2014 by South Korean artist Woopsyang, the event encourages participants to do absolutely nothing for 90 minutes. No phones, no books, no talking, no sleeping, just sitting still and spacing out. The idea began as a social experiment and artistic statement about burnout, overwork, and the fast-paced lifestyle that defines much of modern South Korea.
During the contest, participants’ heart rates are monitored, and those who remain the calmest, showing the least physical and emotional fluctuation, score the highest. Spectators also vote for who appears the most serene. The event has since become a national symbol of mindfulness and mental rest, reminding people that sometimes, slowing down and doing nothing is exactly what they need to recharge in an always-on society.
Originally created back in September 2023, the United States-based ‘Spill Now’ social media project currently boasts 160k followers. The curator of the account states that they are “spilling it all,” with a focus on entertainment, news, and media-related posts.
We’ve reached out to the curator via email to learn more about the account, and we’ll update the article once we hear back from them.
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What do you think, Pandas? We’d like to hear your perspective, so grab a snack and share your thoughts in the comments down below. Which of these photos and facts genuinely impressed you the most, and why?
What do you do to stay curious about the world, no matter how pressed for time and energy you might be? Let us know!
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