“Where did you see that?” “Where did you read that?” “How do you know that’s true?”
I hazard a guess that phrases such as these are now some of the most commonly spoken words in any household or school in Britain.
Nobody reading this article today will need much persuading of the need for digital news literacy. For most young people the news is already 100% digital. Screens are ubiquitous, yet children’s consumption is mainly passive, and we all know that digital means an overwhelming flood of information, opinion, gossip, innuendo, shocking statistics, popular science, conspiracy theories, images, memes, jokes and persuasion flowing straight into the minds of our young.
We know we can’t stop the flood. That cat is well out of the bag. But what we can do is focus on giving children the skills to discern what is going on and protect themselves from bias, prejudice, lies and propaganda.
I actually believe that the next generation of teachers and educators have a historic opportunity to do for digital news and information what the introduction of compulsory education in the 1870s did for numeracy and literacy skills.