It is almost impossible to scroll through any social media feed these days without encountering something that looks real but is not. Some of it is harmless and even delightful: a silly video of cats sliding down plastic tubes, an impossibly perfect sunset that never happened, a celebrity face grafted onto someone else’s body. We laugh, we share, we move on. But the fake stuff stops being funny when it wraps itself around real events, real disasters and real human suffering. Consider the recent flash flooding in Nepal. In the aftermath of that tragedy, AI-generated videos flooded the internet, falsely claiming to show what had happened and why. Some of those videos were so convincing that they triggered conspiracy theories about the cause of the floods. Others simply distracted from the official emergency information that people desperately needed. Visual misinformation is dangerously believable. In a crisis, it can stop people from finding evacuation routes, or send rescuers searching in the wrong places. It can sow confusion, fear and distrust at the exact moment when clear, reliable communication matters most. This is not a distant problem happening somewhere else. It is happening in New Zealand too, and it is happening now.
The most deceptive content online often masquerades as legitimate news. Earlier this year, an investigation by AAP Factcheck uncovered a bogus Facebook page pretending to be a New Zealand news outlet. Behind the polished logo and professional-looking design, it was sharing false, AI-generated images of real events. Around the same time, a 1News investigation found at least ten similar fake news pages circulating false New Zealand content. These pages looked like trusted sources, which is precisely what made them so dangerous. Even the National Emergency Management Agency felt compelled to issue a warning: false pictures of severe weather events were being shared online, including images of the fatal slip on Mauao/Mount Maunganui. Imagine the distress of seeing a devastating event depicted in a way that never actually happened, or the confusion of not knowing which images to trust as the storm closes in. This is the reality of living in a world that increasingly runs on videos and images, where the line between truth and fabrication is blurring by the day. The question is no longer whether misinformation exists, but what we can do about it. How do we teach people to tell the difference between what is real and what is artificially constructed?
According to Stuart McNaughton, a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education at the University of Auckland, assessing information for truthfulness is a skill, and like any skill, it can be taught. McNaughton co-authored a major report on how to develop young people’s ability to spot misinformation, and his findings offer a roadmap for parents, teachers and policymakers. The work involves two separate skill areas. The first is media and information literacy. This means learning to be critical, understanding how you are being manipulated, and judging whether what you are seeing is believable or not. It is the kind of critical thinking that a good English teacher has always encouraged, but now it must be applied in the context of generative AI and social media. The good news, McNaughton says, is that we know how to teach these skills. The second skill area is empathy and communication. McNaughton calls these “citizenship skills” for the internet: the proactive, pro-social, positive skills that allow people to interact online in a constructive way. Empathy, perspective-taking, consideration of others, trying to put yourself in someone else’s shoes: these are also teachable. Yet McNaughton is concerned that these skills are missing from the curriculum currently proposed for New Zealand schools. Being critical is mentioned only once in the draft science curriculum out for consultation, and the foundational years of primary school contain no real reference to critical skills or digital resilience. This is particularly sad because children are quite capable of being critical thinkers from a young age. They are already navigating a complex digital world, and they deserve to be equipped with the tools to do so safely and wisely.
Teaching empathy is not just about spotting misinformation; it has multiple other benefits. McNaughton is appalled by the degree of hate in online spaces, by the way digital channels are used to ferment division and polarise communities. To overcome that, he argues, we need to build positive skills. This is a medium to long-term commitment on the part of the education system, but it is a necessary one. New Zealand has one of the highest bullying rates in the OECD, and McNaughton estimates that probably one child in every classroom is experiencing near-daily or daily cyberbullying in one form or another. The consequences of that are profound, for individuals and for society. Social media, in particular, creates a strange distancing effect. The usual inhibitions on our civility are reduced. There is a real me, a virtual me, a virtual you and a real you, and that distance makes it easier to say things online that we would never say face to face. Comment sections and social media platforms allow people to dehumanise those they are talking to, treating strangers as targets rather than as fellow human beings. So what is the solution? Some people argue for banning social media altogether. But McNaughton dismisses that as a very simplistic solution to a complex problem. Australia’s ban has not been effective; kids still find ways to access social media. Bans do not make the internet a safer place, and they do not help children develop the skills they need to navigate the online world once they eventually gain access. The real answer, McNaughton insists, is to do a better job of teaching those skills directly to our kids.
There are already some fantastic examples of how this can be done. Long-time internet users might remember a website called Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. It describes a fictional, canopy-dwelling cephalopod at risk of extinction, and the entire thing is a joke. The original website is no longer online, but it has been archived by the Library of Congress, and teachers still use it as an educational tool. Professor Dame Juliet Gerrard, the Prime Minister’s chief science adviser while in office, used it herself. The lesson unfolds in a memorable way. First, teachers give students a lesson on the concept of misinformation and lateral reading. The message is simple: if somebody tells you something, you have to go off and check your sources. Later, children are given a project on the tree octopus. They end up on the website, and some begin copying and pasting information without thinking twice. Others search online more widely and discover the truth. Then, as Gerrard describes it, a gradual ripple moves around the room as they realise: actually, there is no such thing as a tree octopus. This is fake. That visceral experience, after all the effort they have invested, makes them understand at a deep, experiential level that not everything on the internet is true. It seems a little cruel, Gerrard admits, but it is effective. Another example is Birds Aren’t Real, a fake online awareness campaign that satirises conspiracy theories. Its website claims that all birds in the United States have been replaced by extremely lifelike drones operated by the government as surveillance tools. The tagline is “If it flies, it spies.” Gerrard thinks it is brilliant satire; she even owns the merchandise. But movements like this can only do so much. They provoke thought and start conversations, but they are not a substitute for systematic education.
Gerrard led a report on misinformation and young people, and its conclusion was clear: we need a national strategy against misinformation, one that acknowledges how it seeps through every layer of society. The punchline, she says, is that we need a big investment in community resilience and we need to really train our kids. This is not just about teaching children to fact-check, although that is important. It is about building a society where critical thinking and empathy are valued as core skills. It is about helping young people understand how they are being manipulated, and giving them the confidence to ask questions rather than accept everything at face value. It is about fostering a digital culture where kindness and respect are the norm, not the exception. The challenges we face are unprecedented. The world is dealing with environmental crises, political polarisation and rapid technological change. Misinformation exploits all of these, feeding on fear and uncertainty. But the solution is not to retreat from technology or to hide from the internet. The solution is to engage with it more wisely, to teach our children to be critical thinkers and compassionate human beings. That work begins in classrooms, but it extends into every home and every community. It requires patience, commitment and a shared belief that truth still matters. The task may seem daunting, but there is hope. We already know how to teach these skills. We already have examples of what works. What we need now is the will to make them a priority. If we do, we can help the next generation not only survive the age of misinformation, but thrive in it.