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Media Literacy

Debate

Is Social Media Good for Society?

January 23, 2020

Students today have never lived in a world without social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok are a few of the most popular social-media websites and apps. They can be a fun way to connect with friends and family, especially…

Audio

People

Find the Facts

January 16, 2020

More than half of teens learn about the news from social-media sources and YouTube videos. That’s according to a 2019 Common Sense Media survey. But the information on those sites is not always trustworthy. “There’s more misinformation out there than…

Audio

Food and Nutrition

Fighting Food Ads

December 4, 2019

Food companies engineer junk food to make it addictive. They label their products to make them seem healthier than they are. And their advertisements target children. This is what students in a Texas middle school learned. They were taking part…

Audio

The View

What's the Password?

October 23, 2019

In an ancient folktale, a giant rock blocks the entrance to a cave that’s filled with treasure. A door appears only for those who speak a secret phrase: “Open, sesame!” This is an early example of a password. Passwords have…

Engineering

Fakeout

September 12, 2019

Deepfakes are videos with visual or audio content that has been manipulated. They can make it seem as if the video’s subject is saying words he or she hasn’t actually spoken. Videos like these used to be made only by…

Video

Culture

Be Internet Smart

August 29, 2019

Picture this: You’re searching the Internet and come across a website. It has interesting articles. Some are news stories. They share information. Others only look like news stories. They are actually advertisements, or ads. The goal of an ad is…

Video

People

Making Sense of the Media

August 31, 2018

Students at Capital Preparatory Magnet School, in Hartford, Connecticut, are watching a video of a basketball drill. “Keep track of how many passes the players dressed in white make,” Marcus Stallworth tells them. He is a media-literacy educator. Many of…

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Spanish

People

Fact Check

November 4, 2016

Khadija Qanoongo, 12, says she used to believe everything she read online. Then she took a news literacy class. She learned how to determine if a website is reliable. She found out that many are not. "Now I'm very careful…

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