As we all are deeply aware, our children are growing up in a world that bombards them with information. From my perspective, much of this information seems manipulative, outright false, or benign but useless. Of course, the proliferation of misinformation is most acute on the Internet. As children ourselves, we came to rely on our library or home set of the World Book Encyclopedia as a resource to help us with homework and reports. Such tomes had a large measure of credibility built in because of the many authors, editors and the publishing process inherent in its creation. Our children have many more choices (substitute “distractions”) today than we did, none of which may require the same publishing process, and therein lies the problem. Given that they are bombarded with so much information, much of it unreliable and useless, through every conceivable conduit, they may have difficulty knowing how to evaluate the validity of their information. This is especially true of the Internet where anyone can be an author and create the pretense of authority.

Such difficulty knowing how to evaluate information is not unique to our children. Many adults are “scammed” and inadvertently perpetuate misinformation when we forward emails sent to us about a hoax virus or urban legend. Sadly, the incidents of September 11 have now spawned a new variety of urban legends and scares circulating the Internet. (See examples below.) Every week I receive these emails from well meaning friends and family concerned about breast cancer from deodorant, missing children, viruses, etc. The overwhelming majority of these are false. In this climate of misinformation and infoglut, it becomes more and more important that we learn how to evaluate information. At the bottom of this article I have provided several web sites that address hoaxes and urban legends/myths. We adults can do our part by checking these web sites before hitting the “Forward” button on the emails that pass through our mailboxes. Equally important, we must educate our children to evaluate the information they receive. They need to learn how to separate fact from opinion, recognize judgment words, and check facts. Once they are old enough, perhaps in the sixth grade, they should learn how to evaluate Internet information. This should include learning how to do effective Internet searches, understand Internet addresses. It can even begin, for example, by learning to recognize that “www.gwu.edu/religiousstudies/” is likely to be more reliable source of information when doing a report on religion than “www.SpeaktoGod.com”.

Fortunately the internet also holds many valuable resources to help our children evaluate information. For example, visit Brookwood's Library and click on Citing Sources. As parents, we can support our children’s learning process by continually asking them questions about the information they gather as suggested by Mrs. Sheila Geraty, librarian and developer of the Brookwood library web site. Even the simplest questions such as “Who is the author of the web site?” and “What domain does the Internet address come from and what does this say about the purpose/source of its information?” are important beginnings to evaluating the value and validity of information on the internet. (Additional resources are below.)

Though this article addresses some of the negative aspects of the Internet, the positive attributes of the Internet are immeasurable. There is no doubt that the Internet will be an integral part of our children’s future. We are still very early in the growth and development of this remarkable technological tool. As with any powerful tool, we need to teach our children how to use it in a safe, productive and healthy manner.

Resources:
Urbanlegends.com
Scambusters.com
HoaxBusters.org
VMyths.com
Symantec.com's Hoax Center