The education system, the way to fight fake news

Abstract

To form broad and sound opinions on various issues, we must be able to access a large amount of information, including online. However, given the increasing prevalence of fake news and disinformation, the information received must be reliable and verifiable. Recognizing questionable or malicious content can be very challenging in today's interconnected world, especially for youngsters. For these reasons, sociologists and teaching staff have voiced the need for policymakers to combat the spread of this phenomenon among youngsters and so, they came together in testing and, later on, in gradually introducing, in the education system, lectures the phenomenon of fake news and disinformation. Lectures increasingly incorporate debunking and digital literacy and are mostly focused on raising awareness of the dangers generated by fake news and disinformation among pupils and students and on learning various techniques for identifying and thus stopping the spread of this type of malicious information. The present article maps the real and potential impact of fake news and disinformation among pupils and students and their healthy mental and social evolution. Therefore, it highlights some recommendations meant to prevent the spread of this phenomenon from the early stages of the individual's evolution, respectively starting in the classroom. The key message of the article could be considered that education is an effective weapon to combat fake news and disinformation.