How can we protect Gen Zers against misinformation?

In 2023, I was part of a team of researchers from Gemic & Google/Jigsaw who published a prizewinning article about the online (mis)information habits of young people.

We found that Gen Zers’ experiences with information are profoundly social. They are digesting information together with others – not just to learn what’s true, but to figure out who they are & what they believe, as part of a community.

Information literacy, the dominant paradigm in this field, often assumes that people are seeking truth as individuals. We challenged this view & offered a new framework called information sensibility – better able to capture the social & emotional dynamics of information-seeking, & a stronger foundation for protecting Gen Zers from fake news.