hi I'm Adele from our family life cot at
UK and we've teamed up with Internet
matters to talk to you about keeping
your family safe online as children
become more active in their digital
world it's important to help them
develop for the digital literacy and
critical thinking to spot the difference
between fact and fiction online
increasingly those creating fake news
are making it more difficult to spot at
times even well-established news
organizations find themselves reporting
on stories based on false information
due to the nature of the online world
with so much information coming from a
wide range of sources it can be hard to
know which are trustworthy critical
digital literacy means being careful
about what you read share and write
online there are various different ways
suggested to improve digital literacy
here is a simple three-part method that
will work most of the time when you're
trying to help your kids read it check
it
weight reading headlines are often
misleading so make sure you read the
whole story
check it anyone can present themselves
as a new source these days but it's not
hard to check online and see if there
really are there are also numerous
fact-checking sites use one if you have
any doubts wait if anything appears
fishy about the post don't share it
there's no shortage of stuff out there
to share
if you still like the story give it a
couple of days and see what other people
think kids that are younger believe
everything they read online it's
something that parents need to be aware
of not everything you see and read is
real this is particularly important to
Jacob as he watches a lot of YouTube
videos so I talked to him about the
editing process and how easy it is to
make people believe you're somewhere
when you're not thanks to green screens
and special effects with amber she knows
to go to trusted sites to research her
homework and I tried to encourage her to
go to two different new sites to get
different angles on a story she's
interested in it's also worth talking to
them about spam and the possibility that
some of the adverts that come across
might also be fake or fraudulent
Internet Matters has created a fake news
advice hope to learn more about what
fake news is and how to spot it to help
your child think critically about what
they see online and improve their media
literacy skills for more advice on how
to help your child's spot fake news and
tools to support them on this issue go
to Internet Matters dog
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The internet has immense potential to change the world for the better and our digitally native children will be the generation that drives this change. Teachers report that their students are better informed on issues of disinformation than we give them credit for; they already have what experts call basic critical digital literacy.
Critical digital literacy means being careful about what you read, share and write online. There are various ways of improving digital literacy.
In part due to fake news, our children suffer from a lack of confidence when it comes to challenging the truthfulness of a piece of information. Rather than telling them something they read online is false, encourage them to check the piece for accuracy themselves.
Social media has created a new kind of ‘digital literacy’. Digital literacy is not just reading content online, but sharing, discussing, and posting content yourself. This ‘participatory culture’ is something we as parents can embrace to manage the impact of disinformation.
Instead of trying to stop children from being online altogether, rather encourage them to be good digital citizens, calling out fake news, being positive in their online communities and creating great content themselves.
Headlines are often misleading so make sure you read the whole story.
Anyone can present themselves as a news source these days, but it is not hard to check online and see if they really are reputable. There are also numerous fact-checking sites. Fullfact.org and Snopes.com are just some recommended sites that you can use.
Here are some questions children and young people can ask themselves to determine if something is real or fake:
If anything appears too good to be true or you are concerned about whether it’s real or fake after checking it, it’s best not to share it. Give it a couple of days to see what other people think, and if you still like the story then consider sharing it.
If they are concerned that an image is not real, they can do a reverse search where they can use a search engine like Google search to upload the image or the image URL and see where else it’s been used online.
words but when you're searching for an
image online how do you know that every
one of those words is true we're gonna
show you a simple trick you can do it
with Google and it's called a reverse
image search okay so there are a couple
of different ways you can do this first
one is to go to images google.com yeah
and you can go over there you this this
looks like a normal Google search page
but we have the Google images icon and
you'll see the little camera search by
image icon right here that's key now one
of the first ways so one of your first
of the few options we'll show you today
to do this is a drag and drop so let's
say you have an image saved on your
desktop here it is I'm just going to
drag it right over here into the search
bar it will upload the file and I get a
whole list of hits where that image is
in the in the page and so I can then go
and investigate all of these different
sources where that image shows up one of
the second options you can do is to
click the little search by image icon
and you can paste a URL in there and
let's say I've found a URL where this
this image I want to search is and I can
paste it in there and search once again
I will get a big list of hits of
different sites where this image shows
up let's talk about a third way that is
even a little bit easier to do and this
is probably the simplest way and one
that I highly recommend only if you're
using Chrome though let's say you're on
a web page and you find an image and you
want to know more about that image you
can right-click or control-click on the
image and then scroll down here to suit
search Google for image and
automatically a new tab will open up in
your Chrome browser giving you the same
so the last step you want to do and the
most important one is probably to ask
some critical questions about the
results that you just found you want to
ask questions like on what kinds of
websites does this image show up are
there any clues about where the image
originated has the image been altered in
any way any place that you've seen it
and that's just the tip of the iceberg
for more information about asking
critical questions with a reverse image
search or just about fact-checking in
general head on over to common sense org
slash education
Checking if videos are real is much harder than images, especially as it has become easier to create fake videos like ‘deep fakes’. However, there are a few features and tools which you can consider using to help spot artificially manipulated videos. Here are a few:
YouTube Playback
For example, if you are watching a video on YouTube, you can slow down the playback speed in the video settings. This will allow you to spot if there are any inconsistencies in the video. If you do spot something, you can screenshot the part of the video you are concerned about and do a reverse search to see if it has appeared anywhere else online.
Microsoft Video Authenticator tool
This is a new tool that was launched in September 2020 by Microsoft. The tool can analyse a photo or video to provide a percentage chance, or confidence score, that the media is artificially manipulated. The tool is available through Reality Defender 2020 website where you simply upload the image or video and it analyses it and then provides a percentage of how likely it’s been manipulated.
You can apply these to your browser to help you identify automated accounts on social media networks.
Some web apps like Newsguard apply a scoring system to websites to showcase which ones are more trustworthy than others. These are based on accuracy, transparency and quality
Here's further advice and resources to support children and young people on this issue:
