Giving Compass' Take:

• According to a new report, high school students still have difficulty discerning fact from fiction online.

• What are the best ways of deciphering fact from fiction? How can we teach our teens not to believe everything they read? 

• Learn more about the voting age debate and teen activism here.

The report provides sobering evidence that prospective young voters lack the skills to judge the reliability of information online, the researchers say.

More than 96% of high school students researchers surveyed failed to consider that ties to the fossil fuel industry might affect the credibility of a website about climate change, More than half believed a grainy video on Facebook that claimed to show ballot stuffing (which was actually shot in Russia) constituted “strong evidence” of voter fraud in the United States.

“If the results can be summarized in a single word, I would say they’re troubling,” says coauthor Sam Wineburg, a professor of education and of history and American studies at Stanford University and founder of the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG).

“The 2020 presidential election is just a year away, and many current high school students will be first-time voters. Our findings show that they are unprepared to assess the information they encounter.”

Read the full article about the troubles of the online world by Carrie Spector at Futurity.