A teacher began his lesson, excited to begin the new quarter with an assignment that would engage his students in a way that traditional assignments would not. As he stood before his class, he announced that they would be starting a class social media page that would be posted to the school's webpage, where the class would be able to post stories and articles that interested them to share with the rest of the school.

A few weeks after beginning the assignment, he began to notice that students were actively engaging with the assignment and were committed to keeping it updated and meeting the deadlines they had established as a class. However, as the quarter continued he began to notice that students were posting articles that were not from the major news organizations they had discussed and began to look into how the students were gathering their information.

After learning that students were relying on news articles that were popular on Facebook and those that came up as the first results during google searches, he decided it was time to put a stop to the webpage and have a conversation about credible sources.

As he began to discuss the importance of having credible and factual sources with his students he was met with blank stares and confusing looks. Shocked at the reaction he received from his students’ and attempting to determine the best course of action moving forward, he hoped his students wouldn't realize just how thrown he was at their lack of education on media literacy.

As he began to formulate how to move forward, a student raised their hand, asking the one question he expected, but desperately hoped, wouldn’t be asked; “What’s Media Literacy?”

A New Normal

The teenagers in the teacher’s classroom, had they been living in the early 2000’s wouldn’t have to worry about media literacy the way that modern teenagers do, because up until the late 2000’s with the release of the first iPhone, among many others, social media would not gain

As new technologies continue to emerge and the age at which children are exposed to social media continues to de cline, media literacy becomes essential to the development of children in modern times and as such should be included as part of the common core standards, requiring schools to institute it and address the issue with the importance it bears.

Social World, Social Media

Despite having existed long before the 2000’s, social media’s rise to popularity began in 2004 with the launch of Facebook in February of that year. Facebook began what can only be labelled a social media phenomenon, filling a void that resided within the internet as people desperately attempted to use e-mail to connect with each other. Its rise to fame not only garnered immense popularity, but resulted in the introduction of countless other platforms in the following years; such as: Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010, and Snapchat in 2011 to name a few.

Marco della Cava, in an article for USA summed up the importance of Facebook neatly, commenting that “AOL opened up people to the internet. Facebook opened up people to each other.” However, in the same article, della Cava also states that a “recent YPulse survey revealed that 65% of those under 18 thought Facebook was “losing its cool factor.””

The Rise and Impact of “Fake News”

As Social Media continues to garner fame and recognition around the world, it connects more people with each other, however, it also opens the gateway for people to spread their opinions of hate and radicalism with the world.

In his article Fact or Fiction: Fake News and Its Impact on Education, Anthony Golding references a true story of when “a white supremacist Twitter account's tweet received more national recognition than expected… Wild plots of Clinton using culinary code names such as hot dog, sauce, and pizza and other rumors began to surface about the presidential candidate's involvement in youngster abuse, torture, and even sacrifice.”

While this story might not present the situation as a serious matter, the events that arose as a consequence of it had the potential for major repercussions. Per Golding, “Eventually, the theories and rumors landed on Comet Pizza in Washington, D.C., the place many believed to be where the allegations against Clinton and other professional politicians took place. Seeking truth and possibly revenge, on December 4, 2016, a 28-year-old North Carolina man, Edgar Maddison Welch, walked into the Comet Pizza restaurant with an AR-15 rifle and fired three shots. Welch later told police that he wanted to investigate the conspiracy theories for himself. Thankfully, none were injured during the event, but the effects of fake news became alarmingly evident.”

Golding identifies the seriousness of the fallout form fake news, giving the exact reason for the events above as a result that “adult members of our society could not distinguish between real and fake news.”

Apart from being difficult to determine the difference between fake news and real news, the beginning of the failure can be traced all the way back to an incomplete education at the time that children began to be exposed to the outlets supplying “fake news” stories.

Fake news, however, becomes an even greater issue when the population of social media users is not educated on proper media literacy techniques. Social media platforms, such as Facebook, rely on users to find and “flag” these fake news articles or inappropriate information. Yet, when the same people they rely on to combat fake news cannot tell the difference between the fake and real news, the problem continues to worsen and becomes a more significant threat to the platforms and society as a whole.

Media Literacy: An Overlooked Necessity

A survey conducted by Common Sense Media of 853 children ages 10-18 living in the United States, has revealed some devastating statistics of how a lack of media literacy education is affecting the lives of modern children. The survey relays that only 44% of those surveyed believe that they can accurately identify "fake news" and even worse 31% admit that after sharing a news story on their social media, they later found out that one or more of those they shared were fake or inaccurate. These statistics are, in a word, scary as they depict how the new generation of students are slowly becoming victims to fake news, and even worse, if not addressed and corrected could lead to more incidents like the one mentioned above.

The greatest issue that arises is that educational institutions are not placing focus and importance on media literacy at the time when students are becoming exposed to fake news and social media. The Common Core State Standards Initiative created a national plan of education for the Unites States, however, the adoption of the standards is optional and to the extent to which they are adopted and how they are implemented differ by state. Some states, such as Florida, have begun to deviate from the standards and create their own versions of standards, such as Florida's Florida Standards, which the state adopted in 2014.

However, more states are following the same path as Florida and beginning to drop the standards from their educational mandates, preferring to create state specific standards. This opens the field to education that differs from state to state and importance being placed on standards that are determined by the state officials.

However, many elected officials, themselves, grew up with the common core standards and, as a result, did not receive proper media literacy education, making it unlikely that they would feel the need to include it in any new standards implemented. This, however, can have severe consequences, as discussed before, and leaves the new generation helpless against the spread of fake news.

Yet, due to the lack of attention and awareness that is given to the topics that matter in the modern era, such as media literacy, these elected officials might not even realize that children are vulnerable to the fake news stories.

A Comprehensive Solution to a Comprehensive Problem

Through the implementation of media literacy to common core standards, we will help combat the spread of misinformation and fake news by educating the children that will later grow up to lead future generations on how to distinguish between fact and fiction and know who is providing the fact and who is twisting the truth in their image. While this alone will not completely eradicate the issue, it will be a major step in combatting the spread of the consequences brought about by the issue and will hopefully lead to future solutions that could further efforts to correct this problem.

The issue that is being faced is that media literacy does not receive the attention it requires by educational institutions and as a result children are growing up with improper and underdeveloped media literacy skills that are affecting them as individuals and society as a whole, as well.

The existing Common Core Standards focus more on the basic aspects of writing and literacy through middle and high school differing only in the level of detail required at each level. If media literacy were to be added, it would greatly change the way students are educated and allow them to develop their writing and research skills with better accuracy.

When looked at logically, if students at the middle school level, when significant development is occurring, are educated on proper media literacy, fake news and misinterpretation will become easier to avoid and those same children, when grown adults contributing to society, will be able to implement better solutions such as encouraging social media platforms to do more to combat fake news and be able to teach their own offspring better media literacy.