Californian primary and secondary schools will teach their students to detect fake news.
We live surrounded by fake news, conspiracies and baseless theories that influence our behavior. For this reason, the State of California (United States) wants its young people to have the tools necessary to identify fake news. For them to be able to do so, learning to recognize them will be a school subject from 2024.
A law approved almost unanimously
Governor Gavin Nerson of the Democratic Party signed House Bill 873 last October. This requires that the State add media education to all branches of study of what is known there as primary and secondary (K-12). It will not be as an independent class, but This learning will be included in existing classes and lessons.
“I’ve seen the impact that misinformation has had in the real world: how it affects the way people vote, whether they accept the election results, whether they try to overthrow our democracy,” said the bill’s sponsor, the Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park. “It’s about making sure our young people have the skills they need to navigate this landscape.” he added.
Aerial view of Los Angeles (California)
This law was approved almost unanimously.which highlights its non-partisan nature. California is not the only state that has promoted similar laws, Delaware, New Jersey and Texas have also passed other strong media learning laws. They will be joined by more than a dozen states, which will soon follow suit, according to Media Literacy Now, a nonprofit organization that advocates for media education in schools.
It will come into force on January 1, 2024. Upon that date, the State will begin to update curricular frameworks, although it is already encouraging teachers to learn media education. The key to its rapid approval has been its simplicity, according to Berman. For him, the important thing was to approve it, so that its possible errors could later be corrected.
Its implementation comes in a crisis of public confidence in the mediathat targets the young population. A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found that adults under the age of 30 are almost as likely to believe information on social media as that of national media. Additionally, only 7% of adults trust the media a lot, according to a 2022 Gallup poll.
The proliferation of fake news is not limited to the United States, It also affects Europe and the rest of the planet. It seems that the leaders are getting on with it, since recently the European Union is putting pressure on X to increase his security. On the other hand, the first sentences are arriving for invent fake articles using AI.
