About half of junior and senior-high school students believe false information — or fake news — affects them personally, while even more reported receiving “suspicious messages” in the past three months, a survey released yesterday by CommonWealth Parenting magazine found.
Thirty-five percent of 15,000 respondents said fake news is “somewhat related” to them, 17 percent said it was “very related,” 11 percent said it was “completely unrelated to them,” 17 percent said it is “not really related” and 19 percent said they did not know, the survey conducted in September found.
Twenty-eight percent said their parents and teachers have never discussed the issue of fake news with them, and the same percentage said their schools have not taught them how to distinguish between true and false information, the survey found.
Photo: Rachel Lin, Taipei Times
Sixty-six percent reported having received “suspicious messages” in the past three months.
The Internet is the main source of news for most (55 percent), followed by television (34 percent), family members (4 percent), classmates, teachers, newspapers and magazines (2 percent each), the survey found.
Forty-six percent of junior-high respondents said they receive their news from the Internet, compared with 64 percent of those in high school.
Asked which online platform they use the most to get news, 37 percent said YouTube, 30 percent said Facebook, 16 percent said Instagram and 8 percent said Line.
Thirty-five percent said they spend more than three hours on the Internet per day.
When watching news programs, 25 percent of respondents said they question the programs’ truthfulness, but do not try to verify it, and 14 percent said they never question the truthfulness.
When it comes to sharing news items, 25 percent of respondents said they do not check the date of publication, 21 percent do not pay attention to who or which media outlet released the item, and 17 percent do not pay attention to the source of the information, the survey found.
“Elementary and junior-high school students are digital natives,” magazine editor-in-chief Chen Ya-hui (陳雅慧), said. “They understand the world through the Internet and social networking platforms, but these are the biggest hotbeds for false information.”
Chen urged students to remember “four noes and one yes”: “Do not just look at the headline, do not panic, do not click ‘like,’ do not share and do verify.”
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