Effect of Fake News on Education and Teenager Students

Introduction

This report will discuss the impact of fake news on education. The definition of fake news and each impact will be stated. After research has been conducted and stated, a conclusion will be included at the end of the report to state what the findings were.

What Is Fake News?

Fake news is made-up news, manipulated to look like credible journalistic reports that are designed to deceive us. The internet has become the primary and primary sources of news and information, but unfortunately not everything online is true and trustworthy.

• Fake news is false information intended to trick readers into believing it to be reliable and correct information
• Fake news is any articles or video that contains incorrect information that persuades the reader or viewer as true and from reliable news source. Unfortunately, pseudo-news is not unique on the internet. False news has recently become a major problem in the digital word.

Fake news has a huge impact on education. These impacts will be discussed in the next chapter of the report.

Impact of Fake News on Education

As children and young people have increased access to social media, so they are more exposure to read and believe in fake news. This effects children as they believing the wrong news which has no reliable source and they might share it with their young siblings and friends in school and spread around the young people. Fake news which reach children and young people might cause a lot of series problems as their thinking will be changed this is because they receive the wrong information.

For example, on BBC articles a girl called Chloe, she shared a hoax story about the alleged death of her favourite actor, Sylvester Stallone. ‘’I thought it was real and shared it with family members. A lot of people were quite upset,’’ she says. When the truth became clear that Sylvester Stallone was alive and well, Chloe says she felt foolish. “I should have looked into it a bit more before posting,’’ she adds. The group of MPs has a report which says failing for fake or false news can harm children’s ‘’wellbeing, trust in journalism and democracy itself’’. The all-party parliamentary group on literacy heard proof that fake news could make worried, nervous, it might also affect their self-esteem and awry their view of the world.

A lot of young people and students do not have the ability to compare between real and fake news and information found online. Fake news and stories spread through the election with the aim extol or insult either nominee, as stated in news analysis by Buzz Feed News. The analysis was found discovered that the top fake election news stories produced more engagement on Facebook than the top stories from main news accesses like the protector, CNN and fox news in the seven months leading up to the election.

An example of one of these stories is “Thousands of Fraudulent Clinton Votes Found in Ohio Warehouse,” spread by the Christian Times and written by a recent college graduate, who after admit it to be fake. Another example is “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found dead,” published by the Denver Guardian on Nov. 5, 2016. From that day forward, to fight the propagation of fake news on social media, Facebook administrative have been using synthetic smartness to reveal words or method that are denotative of fake news stories, as stated by Forbes.

The Stanford study, posted in November accorded to the survey was 7,804 students from middle school age to college age asked question about online information. It says that young people’s capability to reason as the information they found online as ‘’bleak.’’ This indicates that young peoples are not able to identify the incorrect information menace democracy itself.

Fake news is danger of technology progression and networking because it happens at all-time but at this time as young people are active on social media sites, they can see the various viral posts and pictures which impacts on their mentality towards things in life.

The fake news has huge reach across the internet and a lot of people might believe those incorrect news because these are spread in a way looks like realistic. Students and young people are more exposure to fake news and viral posts and that’s because they are not mature enough to have the capability to reveal recognise the fake news as they can easily be affected by the fake news sources and it effects their learning culture. Fake news can affect behaviour, too. It encourages students to think of excuses to reject and confuse other students’ ideas, to exaggerate the truth, and to spread rumour. This can make split, nervousness at schools where students are sarcastic and unsure of who to trust.

The Sources of Fake News and How It Spreads Around the World

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, snapchat and twitter. From my perspective this is the fastest way to spread anything people wants to share and this because when a person posts something, there will be a people seeing this post and they might share it with others. However, especially when this post includes fake news as fake news spread faster than real news, this is because incorrect news attracts the attention of society, especially young people in their teenager age as they don’t have experience enough to have good knowledge about people who post fake news for some reason.

It could be also from school where friend said a fake story news and other student believed it, this can spread very easy as student tell other student in another class and this student who been told the fake story/news might share it with the class, the class students could share it with their siblings and social friends. Google is a way for people who wants to post fake news and share it with others, as they can make a fake site a similar to top and know site. At this time a lot people are reaching to internet and those people who doesn’t have access to social media or they’re not interested in these apps, most of them using google to search for news or any other things they want to know about as a lot of fake news on google can be found.

Fake news can spread on YouTube where can anyone make a YouTube channel using a famous YouTuber name with a little bit of changing, e.g. real YouTuber channel name is: Noor stars and fake YouTuber channel name will be Noor stars, so it seems the same person to others, they might not realise the small difference and believe in what they hear. This person might take some videos from that popular YouTuber channel and download them to this fake YouTube channel, after that he start to share the news or the subject he wants to share and reaches others. This can spread very quick as I mentioned earlier those people who seeing the video could not see the simple difference and a thousands and millions of people might watch that video which include wrong information. However, unfortunately some people do not double check if that news are correct or not, they could share it with others and that’s how it spreads around the world.

Fake news can spread on TV where TV news channel is against a popular news channel, as this fake new channel wants to reach a to a high viewer’s number. This channel will provide news as opposed to the correct news provided by the original news channel. Some people might believe it and share it with others, this is how the fake news can increase and expand.

The Solution

Students should check the sources of the news they read so they can spot it if it’s correct or fake. In my opinion schools can solve this problem by teaching the students and help them how to spot those fake news, schools should make students aware of fake news and how it’s dangerous on their mind-set and on their education. Students should look attentively at the source and think carefully before making their decision.

Schools can help students how to spot fake news by teaching them easy steps to follow when they see any news online sites, so they can learn and be able to identify the fake news, these steps are:

1. Students should develop their critical mind sets because a lot of people trying to make ‘’shock’’ value which means, they just want to get attention from these young people and that’s because young people are more active on social media and they are more likely to share that news with their siblings and friends and this news can spread in this way, specially by using social media.
2. Students should check the sources if they come across a story or news from a source that they’ve never heard of before and find out a bit more about the publisher, think about and examine it - is it professional and popular news or is it someone’s personal blog as counterfeit sited using a valid, real and known news sites with a little changing in the name or website URL, e.g. real news website will be: www.uknews.live.com, and fake news website will be: www.uknews.com.
3. Students also need to check that news if it’s correct by using other websites for the same information news. However, if they have the accessible to that news on top news sites then they can be sure that the news they have read is correct and trusted and if not then, she’s should be able to classify this to fake news. When people are trying to figure out the fake news and find the differentiation between real and fake news, this called fact check.
4. Students should check if the story or news sounds true and believable by use their own common sense to identify if it’s true or unbelievable story, for example: it’s unbelievable and unlikely that a very expensive gold jewelry brand is giving away a million free gold jewelry sets to people who turn up their stores. however, they also need to know, just because it sounds right doesn’t mean that it is all the time because sometimes might be not true as they need to double check the information they’ve read and ask others, it’s preferred to ask an adult and educated person or check top and popular sites where they’re not able to classify this information to fake or real news.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this essay affected me as an individual in many ways. Firstly, I was able to identify what is the meaning of fake news, the cause of fake news. I learnt how this issue effects students in their education study and how it impacts on their personal life. I learnt new things which I can use it in my future. I’m fully understanding how to differentiate between the correct and false new and which sites can be trusted and which ones not. During my research to fake news I was able to identify the fake news sources and where they come from, so I’m familiar with this now. I would like to use my knowledge in fake news to support my family and friends to spot fake news and incorrect stories so I can spread this information around the people I know and these people can share it with others as well so we can get rid of fake news.