National study of high school students’ digital skills paints worrying portrait, Stanford researchers say

Researchers charged 3,446 American students with vetting news stories and other digital content. Students tried, mostly in vain, to find truth. A new national study by Stanford researchers showing a woeful inability by high schoolers to detect fake news on the internet suggests an urgent need for schools to integrate new tools and curriculum into classrooms that boost students' digital skills, the study's authors say. In the largest such study undertaken, researchers from Stanford Graduate School of Education devised a challenge for 3,446 American high school students who had been carefully selected to match the demographic makeup of the American population. Rather than conduct a standard survey, in which students would self-report their media habits and skills, the research team came up with a series of live internet tasks. The results, published online this week in the journal Educational Researcher , highlight what the researchers say is an urgent need to better prepare students for the realities of a world filled with a continual flow of misleading information. "This study is not an indictment of the students-they did what they've been taught to do-but the study should be troubling to anyone who cares about the future of democracy," said Joel Breakstone, director of the Stanford History Education Group and the study's lead author.