A teacher in Ecuador found teens already doubt what they see online — and taught them how to turn that into power
As a high school history teacher and fact-checker, Gabriel Narváez wanted to bridge his two professional worlds. His goal was to strengthen public discourse by teaching his students to question what they read and share online.
Narváez sees hope in the next generation of Ecuadorians. He also sees a challenge. Even the best education can’t compete with the flood of unverified information that shapes young people’s digital lives. He worried his students didn’t care whether what they saw on social media was true. But he found something unexpected: his students were already skeptical.
When Narváez heard of the Disarming Disinformation program — a collaboration between Poynter Institute’s MediaWise and the International Center for Journalists — he saw a way to sharpen that skepticism into skill.
Related Knowledge Center: Media literacy
Digital technology has irrevocably altered the media landscape. As traditional sources of credible information — gatekeepers — lose influence, jostled and often replaced by content of uncertain pedigree, many users lack the requisite skills to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies, sense from nonsense. The market doesn’t reward one over the other — social media algorithms often produce better business outcomes with falsehoods — prompting some dedicated efforts to empower users with better critical-thinking tools.