Deleting Posts is Not Enough, Teach Media Literacy to Combat COVID Misinformation
By Jingyi Liu, M.D. and Jason Nagata, M.D., M.Sc.
Social media companies like Twitter, Youtube and Facebook have overhauled their misinformation strategy to combat the recent surge in vaccine misinformation. This was a long overdue update, as COVID misinformation occurs more frequently on social media than on traditional news sources. This was also an important win for young people living through the pandemic, as the COVID misinfodemic affects young people more than any other demographic. A recent study showed that teens and young adults have the highest rates of COVID misinformation. 18% of respondents age 18–24 believed in a false COVID claim, compared with only 9% of those over 65.
As doctors who have cared for young people during the pandemic, we believe that we need to do more than rely on the good will of tech companies to protect young people against COVID misinformation. We need to empower young people with an education in media literacy so they can combat misinformation themselves.
Deleting posts is not enough
Young people are particularly susceptible to COVID misinformation because the media platforms they use are breeding grounds for misinformation. On Tik Tok and YouTube, COVID conspiracy theories, ranging from ‘5G towers are perpetuating the spread of coronavirus’ to ‘coronavirus was started by the government to “mind control” the masses’, attracted up to millions of views before being removed. While platforms working with governments and health authorities to remove or earmark COVID misinformation is a step in the right direction, they are unable to do this fast enough. Social media is inherently viral by design, by the time a particular piece of news is checked or removed, millions of people may already have been exposed and the damage may already have been done.
The consequences of misinformation amongst young people are dire.
The consequences of the COVID misinfodemic on teens and young adults are dire. For one, conflating the coronavirus with the “China virus” can drive anti-Asian racism in schools. A Chinese-American teenager shared with the New York Times the rising incidence of racism at her Florida high school, including a situation where a classmate said “all Chinese people are dirty”. Second, young adults are already under significant stress from the changes in routine and the interruptions to education that the pandemic has brought on. Anxiety and depression have skyrocketed in young adults during the pandemic, affecting >60% of those age 18–24. COVID-related fake news can compound these mental burdens by driving confusion, panic, and fear. Finally, COVID misinformation can fuel the continuation of the pandemic. Believing in conspiracy theories like vaccines containing biochips may discourage young people from receiving the vaccine.
There has never been a better time to teach media literacy
There has never been a better time to teach young people media literacy than during this pandemic. Media literacy classes can help people discern fake news from real news and have slowly started to take hold in schools in recent years. Given that the pandemic has fully forced society into the virtual setting, all schools should now offer media literacy curricula to help students adjust to this new way of life. The goal of media literacy class is to teach individuals that it is both good and bad that anyone can post anything on the internet. Students should learn the skill of lateral reading, which involves corroborating a piece of information with another source. To support source-checking on social media, students should learn to check web addresses, query the “about me” section, and reverse search images if suspicious for doctoring. Curricula could feature documentaries, such as The Social Dilemma, to spark debate about how social media insidiously shapes our emotions and our thoughts. Both parents and teachers can teach these crucial skills in media literacy. Doing so will not only help young people cope with the flood of information in the ongoing pandemic, it will also develop them into critical thinkers for the rest of their lives.
Jingyi Liu, M.D. is an MBA candidate at the Wharton School of Business. She researches health communications in adolescents and young adults.
Twitter: @jingyiliu8
Jason Nagata, M.D., M.Sc. is an assistant professor in the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and co-chair of the International Association for Adolescent Health Young Professionals Network.
Twitter: @jasonmnagata
