Do teens value primary sources?

[Anonymous]

I’m trying to push back at some of the hot takes that my 15 yo son has started throwing at me, and I’m realizing that we have fundamentally different ways of looking at the world and creating an informed opinion.

On a controversial topic, for example, I’d read balanced newspapers to get a framework, hunt down primary sources to dig into open questions, and then form an opinion w footnotes.

In contrast, he would check out AP news and Wikipedia, maybe spot chrck snopes, and stop there. He’d prefer journalists and preselected video clips over experts or primary media, even if they are easy to find and take the same time to read.

I’m guessing this is a generational gap, but I have no idea how to address this. This way of creating ideas in the world just seems so ripe for manipulation... Wondering if anyone has noticed the same.

Is it worth walking through primary sources with him if he doesn’t really value that info? I feel like such an old…

[Anonymous]

What do you consider to be a “primary source” for a current news event? Honestly, if your kid is reading AP news and then checking multiple other sources, he’s likely doing way more than most of his peers who just trust what they see on TikTok. Checking multiple sources indicates that he understands not to just blindly trust what he reads.

[Anonymous]

There was a nymag article on the same thing: https://www.thecut.com/article/how-to-talk-kids-social-media-opinions-hot-takes.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you consider to be a “primary source” for a current news event? Honestly, if your kid is reading AP news and then checking multiple other sources, he’s likely doing way more than most of his peers who just trust what they see on TikTok. Checking multiple sources indicates that he understands not to just blindly trust what he reads.

Truth.

My 10th grade son is working with 5th graders on a club project that requires research. He's blowing their mind by telling them they have to go deeper than the AI Summary and actually evaluate link quality.

[Anonymous]

It’s not generational, it’s personality. I’m 50 and do the same as your teen. You track down primary sources? That sounds like a history teacher and a research paper to me.

[Anonymous]

I guess that I’m used to looking up books or experts over news articles, or looking up the full transcript of a meeting instead of assuming that the clips gave a full picture of what happened.

I’m not sure if he takes influencers at their word, and that’s part of the concern I guess. If you’re satisfied with stopping at someone else’s summary or synthesis, how do you make your own opinion?

[Anonymous]

To what extent does his school curriculum teach him to evaluate the quality of the information he's reading/seeing? That was a huge focus of middle school social studies for my kids and it continues, to a lesser extent, in high school.

[Anonymous]

This is not generational, but personality-driven.
I know older people and younger people who just believe whatever their social media feed tells them. Some are on DCUM.

My husband and I are research scientists, and our kids generally understand they need to find credible sources and verify. We are trained to assess the quality of the data on which hypotheses and theories are formulated. So for news, even though it's tempting to look at the latest screaming headline or social media post and immediately embrace their position if they match our beliefs... we force ourselves to look into whatever data is presented as the source of information. Is it a credible source? Does it present the full context?

Many people don't do this. It's too much work. And we don't do this for everything. I trust AP and Reuters. I generally trust the NYT and WaPo for reporting on incidents (opinion pieces and editorials are different), but I look at what sources they used.

Video clips and quotes can be very misleading, since they are taken out of context. I've learned to look for other verification of what actually happened. And now with AI, we're heading down a very difficult path of video verification and trust in content. What's about to come through the pipeline is scary. Any ill-intentioned government or entity can create a wholly different reality for its citizens. With full-scale war threatening in Europe and China nearly fully prepared to invade Taiwan, this is a very real possibility.

[Anonymous]

I’m a medical researcher so I guess it might be just personalities.

As I’m seeing the enshittification of cdc and gov sites, and a media that is less capable of doing deep analysis as less journalists are pressured to push out more content, I worry that this second hand approach is dangerous - esp for hot takes. Maybe I’m just worrying over nothing though…

[Anonymous]

I think getting news from quick sources is ok, as long as you have critical thinking skills. It's the lack of critical thinking skills that gets people.

And it's not age. My siblings in their 50s get all their news from social media and will believe ANYTHING.

I actually get a fair amount of news from TikTok, but I have critical thinking skills. We arrive at very different conclusions from the news we consume.

[Anonymous]

My kid was parroting YouTube conspiracy theories and often-ridiculous social media “investigative reporting” over the summer. Those critical thinking skills that pp mentioned? I thought he had them, but when too immersed in social media they just fell to the side.

I get the national literacy project updates and have found them really helpful when talking to my kid - https://newslit.org/get-smart-newsletters/

[Anonymous]

DC's approach is entirely reasonable. The difference is entirely in your personality.

Specifically, AP News is credible - most quality newspapers use AP.

Primary news sources often are biased and much less credible than AP.

[Anonymous]

My kids had classes in middle school that taught them about fact checking, fake news, sources and types, and how to spot a fake source.
From that point on through high school, they were challenged with finding valid and reliable sources for news.
I thought every school did that, but judging from the amount of people who think fox etc is real news- guess not.

[Anonymous]

Are you the Greek Lit Professor who posted about her kid ragging on the Odyssey?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids had classes in middle school that taught them about fact checking, fake news, sources and types, and how to spot a fake source.
From that point on through high school, they were challenged with finding valid and reliable sources for news.
I thought every school did that, but judging from the amount of people who think fox etc is real news- guess not.

My son was taught these skills in both 6th and 7th grade. He still fell for fake new stories.