Guest Author Feature: Are students more likely to believe a TikTok than their textbook?

Submitted by Nancy McFadden, Barrington High School Teacher Librarian

Information overload is a daily occurrence for our students. How do we help them sort through the noise and learn to be more discerning about the information they absorb? While students are likely to judge the trustworthiness of a TikTok or YouTube video based on the number of likes or views, we want to push our students to be more thoughtful in how they evaluate a source. Media literacy skills emphasize the concept that all messages are created with a purpose and that the medium containing that message is important to understand its meaning.

To begin, we need to help students understand the difference between three kinds of misinformation. These differences are primarily based on the intention or motivation of the creator.

Misinformation is false information that is inadvertently spread—the intent is not to deceive; it's simply a mistake. In contrast, disinformation is false information that is deliberately created and shared in order to influence or obscure the truth. Finally, malinformation refers to false information that is specifically designed and shared with the intent to cause harm.

To deepen students' understanding, this topic can be paired with a quick Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lesson on recognizing our emotions. False information often aims to trigger strong emotional responses, which can short-circuit our ability to think critically. By teaching students to recognize these emotional cues, we can train them to pause, ask critical questions, and analyze information through a more reflective and informed lens.

One practical strategy for analyzing information is a technique used by professional fact-checkers called lateral reading. This digital literacy skill helps identify misinformation by prompting students to ask one essential question: Who created this content, and why? Unlike traditional vertical reading—where we evaluate a website by scrolling through it and looking for clues—we encourage students to leave the site entirely, open a new tab, and investigate what other reliable sources say about it. This shift in approach helps them better understand the context, credibility, and potential bias behind the original source.  Students can ask any or all of these questions: Who created this? What is the evidence? What do other sources say? What is the author’s intention?

To accomplish all of this, a terrific source for teachers to know about is the News Literacy Project’s Daily Do Now slide deck. This is a weekly collection of bellringers to increase student awareness of different aspects of digital manipulation. See which one makes you stop and think and then try it with your students.

When we equip students with the tools to navigate misinformation, we’re not just teaching media literacy—we're fostering resilient, independent thinkers.

To find more ways to embed Digital/Media Literacy, team up with your teacher librarian to co-teach media literacy lessons that help support critical thinking skills and balanced research strategies.

*Some phrasing in this article was assisted by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.