"Journalism or 'influencers'?": What do teenagers think about disinformation?

GironaStudents from 5th grade of Primary School to 4th year of Secondary School from six educational centers in Girona have participated in the competition of informative pieces and drawings on the right to informationAnalyzing the rise of disinformation and fake news, the project, organized by ARA and UNICEF, with the collaboration of the Girona City Council and Plataforma Educativa, involved more than 100 students from IES Ermesenda, Maristas Girona, Montessori Girona, IES Montilivi, Fedac Sant Narcís, and IES Vicens Vives. Unlike previous competitions, students were asked to write informative pieces, not stories, on the topic of disinformation and fake news. fake newsMost of the participants wrote opinion pieces. Below are the winning entries and drawings. The prizes will be awarded on Tuesday, November 25th at the La Mercè Cultural Center in Girona.

ARA Special Cover Prize

Category 3rd and 4th year of ESO

Influencers have partially replaced journalists, which can pose a risk to the veracity of information.

We all know that social media has made it easier to find information, but because of this, it's more difficult to detect its authenticity. According to educac.cat (Universitat Catalana), 62% of influencers don't verify the accuracy of information before publishing and sharing it across social media.

In our experience as teenagers on social media, we encounter a wide variety of information, controversies, fake news...with great difficulty for verification.

Through studies in the United States, specifically in Bowling Green State, we have been able to verify that 12.6% of consumers of this news verify the accuracy of the information, while 41.6% rely on the popularity (likes, comments, views) of the news to accept its truth.

Although a large part of young people believe that the influencers They are a less complex, more transparent, and more accessible source of information than traditional media (newspapers, articles, radio, etc.). Traditional media will always be more credible, as they undergo a verification process within the multinational corporation that disseminates the information. Finally, 44% of young people between 18 and 24 years old state that social media (TikTok, Instagram, X, Snapchat, etc.) is their main source of information. In conclusion, social media is a good source of information, but it's important to know which sources to trust and which not, since some content creators extract information from unofficial websites.

You check your phone, Girona is flooded; you open the window, the sun is shining brightly.

Why is it so easy for us to believe a fake news And is it so hard to recognize that we're being manipulated?

Perhaps because we like everything done for us, since it's more comfortable to believe it without stopping to think if it's true or not. Although the intentions of these videos are cruel, they aim to touch our most sensitive spots. It's difficult to watch a video and know if they're playing with our emotions. And that's how they gain more power, not with the truth, but with feelings. We think that older people or those who don't understand are the ones who fall for it most often. But we don't just swallow it, we share it.

We find it tiresome when adults tell us about the dangers of social media, and we dismiss it. But what we don't want to believe is that with each like We give power to all those who control us.

And what's the solution? How can we be smarter than those who make a living by deceiving us?

We believe we should check things with a reliable source, but we can't verify everything, with so much news coming in. In our case, when the DANA storm hit, we were traveling. As we were getting off the plane on our way to London, we were frightened by some images of flooded Girona that were circulating on social media. We immediately became agitated, worried about our family. What if they were hurt? What if their car was swept away? What if classes were canceled? What if the river destroyed buildings? What if people died? Luckily, before our information got worse, our parents, who kept their cool, cleared things up for us, checking a newspaper article. And yes, it was all a lie.

But how many people have watched this video and not verified it? All of them have been deceived, just as we could have been.

And together we keep swimming so as not to drown in this sea of lies and deceit, where only ethics and knowledge save you from mediocrity.

The fake news They have become one of the biggest problems. Every day, more and more fabricated news stories appear on social media, which many people believe without checking if they are true.

We think the blame lies not only with those who create them, but also with those who share them. We should all be more critical and check the sources before saying something is true.

I also think that this topic should be discussed more in schools. Learning to recognize the fake news It is important so that we are not deceived. In conclusion, the fake news They are a danger. If we want to avoid being manipulated, we must learn to think and not believe everything we see on the internet.

Furthermore, behind many fake news There are people who want to manipulate public opinion or make money from the advertising generated by website visits. This makes the problem even more serious, because they not only deceive, but also play with people's trust.

Sometimes, people think that a fake news It can't do much harm, but it can. It can lead someone to make the wrong decisions, create absurd arguments, or cause a loss of trust in science or journalists.

The worst part is that when a lie is repeated many times, some people end up believing it. This is very dangerous because it can change the way we see the world. That's why it's important to talk about it with family, friends, or teachers, and not remain in doubt.

I also think that journalists have a great responsibility. They shouldn't publish news without thoroughly checking it. Sometimes they use very exaggerated headlines just to get attention, and that also helps to confuse people.

I think we all have a share of responsibility in this fight against misinformation. fake newsWhat you can do is: think before you share, check the information, and help others do the same. If we all made that small effort, it would be a slightly safer place.

In conclusion, the fake news They are a real danger and affect us all. If we want to avoid being deceived, we must learn to think for ourselves, to verify information, and not believe everything we see on the internet.

Today, information reaches younger generations through social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and others. While this makes information more accessible to those of us accustomed to using these apps, it also makes us vulnerable to the already popular [social media/messages/etc.]. fake news

As teenagers, we live in a period where we use everything we see to better adapt to our environment. Because we are developing as people, but what kind of people will we be if we read fake news, biased truths, misleading clickbait headlines, or AI-generated images? Older generations may find this superficial, since most of this news can be detected using common sense, but if this is our daily bread, how can we differentiate it from real news? We open our phones and read "Haaland???: new Barça signing," and we even tell our parents, taking it as fact. This example may seem trivial, but statements like these can change public opinion about a political party or a clothing brand. And this directly affects elections or income, respectively.

On the other hand, we have gone from the generation that gets its news daily, or from the news, to ours, which basically uses social media to get it. The main difference is anonymity: in older information systems, everyone has a face, a first and last name. There's someone responsible for disseminating each news item; a presenter, a journalist. In contrast, the new sources They allow anonymity, which serves, on the one hand, for those who lack the courage to express themselves openly, and on the other, as a cowardly shield for those who spread lies for their own gain.

To make matters worse, no one has taught us how to verify information; we don't know how to check if what we're reading is real or has been altered by someone, which means that we ourselves spread this news. The best thing we can do is check these sources If the information we're looking for exists in older sources, it's worth noting.

The conclusion is this: As teenagers, we are the most vulnerable group because we have the same access to social media as adults, but without their experience. In this world, real-life experience is fundamental, as it gives us a certain insight and distrust of what we cannot see or touch.

Category 1st and 2nd year of ESO

Young people are receiving more and more information, but we don't always know how to distinguish between true and false. Furthermore, although we spend many hours in front of screens these days, this doesn't mean we're better informed; rather, we don't really know what's happening around us because we indiscriminately receive both true and verified news, as well as outright fabrication. From our perspective, we believe this affects us negatively, as it creates uncertainty between reality and fiction.

It's been shown that new stories are published and go viral every year. fake newsAn example would be when Donald Trump recently said that paracetamol could cause autism. This was a shock to all of us, since many people in positions of power take advantage of their influence to make the public believe ideas that aren't true. Furthermore, these events make the work of journalists increasingly complex because they share the responsibility of debunking false information to protect citizens.

We know that this phenomenon isn't new, and when we share our experiences with our families, they tell us that it already existed years ago. fake newsHowever, they were easier to detect because artificial intelligence didn't exist back then, whereas now this technology is much more developed. Fortunately, as time has passed, we've learned several tips for verifying the information we receive. These are some of the most helpful recommendations: check that the document doesn't have spelling mistakes, compare the information with what's published on other official websites, read the comments, use common sense, and get our information from reliable audiovisual media, such as TV3 news, the ARA newspaper, and the Ayer newspaper. Reliability is in danger, since artificial intelligence and social media have evolved a lot, making it much easier to create fake news. That's why we must take some precautions and follow expert advice.

Category 5th and 6th Grade Primary

You've probably heard about AI. It's a somewhat "special" topic. Why? Well, because like everything else, AI has its supporters and detractors. What's "special" about it is that the man nicknamed "the godfather of artificial intelligence" left Google, but we'll get to that later. Do you think AI is good?

AI, like everything else, can have pros and cons, like scissors. If you use them properly, they can cut paper, cardboard, etc. But if you misuse them, you can hurt yourself or others. It's practically the same, just more complex. For example, you might unwittingly give your personal data to AI, and then they might use it.

What happened was that the godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize winner in Physics, resigned from Google and denounced the dangers of AI to humanity. What problems/dangers might there be? Well, for example, technological dependence, which can translate into the loss of human skills in certain tasks, or that cybercriminals can take advantage of AI and enhance their attacks, social problems, or that you spend a lot of time talking to ChatGPT, Gemini… and then find it difficult to relate to others.

One of the problems I mentioned earlier is technological dependence, and that you can lose the ability to perform some human tasks such as memory, creativity, and critical thinking. But now let's talk about the good things. AI can allow machines to make decisions faster than a human, or it can save lives, for example, by detecting possible tumors, but be careful, it's not always accurate.

In conclusion, if you use it well, it can be useful. But if you use it as a psychologist, for example, you can harm yourself because AI isn't designed to control your emotions or teach you how to control them.

Do you already have an answer as to whether AI is good?