Alice Huguet knows a few things about middle school kids that people don't always see. They're listening. They're engaged. They care about what's happening in the world, and they can be savvy users of news and information—when they know where to look.

But they're also just starting to take their first steps into the hall of mirrors that is the modern media landscape. They're easy marks for misinformation, disinformation, trolls, bots, bias, and deceit—for the hollowing-out of public discourse that RAND describes as Truth Decay. Helping them find their way is important not just for their futures, but for the future of democracy.

Huguet, a former middle school teacher, now studies Truth Decay as a policy researcher at RAND. She teamed up with fellow researcher Andrea Prado Tuma to develop a set of lesson plans that teachers can use to help their students sort “facts” from facts. They had two goals, both lofty: to get 12- and 13-year-olds excited about public policy, and to do it in a way that would build their resistance to Truth Decay.

“Truth Decay—the diminishing role of facts and analysis in public life—poses a very real threat to democracy, and every age group is susceptible in its own way,” Huguet said. “Middle school students are just starting to learn about how policy intersects with their own lives. We wanted to teach them how to be safe and be aware of the information they use, but also to show them how they can contribute creatively and responsibly to the information ecosystem.”

Huguet and Prado Tuma saw an opportunity to attack Truth Decay at the roots.

Their project would eventually involve a small cast of RAND experts. But they took their early direction from a few dozen middle schoolers in Boston and Los Angeles. What they heard from the teens and pre-teens was not just passing curiosity about policy issues like immigration and climate change, but real interest. “What makes families immigrate to the United States?” “What can I, as a sixth-grader, do to help stop climate change?”

They developed a sequence of five lesson plans designed to turn ordinary middle schoolers into classroom experts on immigration, climate change, COVID precautions, or school start times. The students would work in teams to find credible information online, and then prepare a final video presentation or podcast for the class. Each team would have a designated fact-checker to verify any information it used.

That may seem like a pretty straightforward classroom assignment. But it opens up a conversation about what counts as a credible source, who qualifies as a credible expert, and how to find reliable information about high-wire policy issues like climate change. It teaches a life lesson for the internet age: Never accept information without asking who put it out there, and why.

Read the full article about media literacy research by Doug Irving at RAND Corporation.