From the Scholastic Bookshelf: How to Talk to Your Child About What’s Fact and What’s Fake

At any age, we’re constantly taking in facts to develop our knowledge, strengthen our opinions, and solve problems in our environment. Although the facts can sometimes be unpleasant, we count on their truth to inform our actions and responses.

Even before your child is reading nonfiction or information-based books, they are processing the signs and signals around them (like traffic lights). As they grow, they’ll read magazines and digital news to learn about the world beyond their bus route. These days, a healthy news-reading habit requires careful attention to detail to identify fake or unfounded information. 

This means learning how to be skeptical, examining information sources closely, and comparing what’s being presented to what one already knows to be true. Learning how to distinguish fact from fake calls for critical thinking and the ability to draw inferences independently. But the result is a lifelong skill: Your child will only look for news they can use.

For its 100th anniversary, Scholastic spoke with experts to identify a set of tips, articles, and books that make starting a conversation with your child about fact versus fake easier. These resources are part of a broader initiative, called the Scholastic Bookshelf, created for Instagram to raise awareness around contemporary issues affecting children today.

Here are some resources for explaining to your child that not everything they’ll read is true — and how to spot fact from fake.

Examples of Fact vs. Fake for Elementary School Readers:

The classic tale of Chicken Little, which finds its title character spreading lies about the apocalypse after taking a bonk to the head, is retold in Chicken Little: The Real and Totally True Tale. Alas, the sky is not falling. It’s a clever update of the timeless farmyard folly where the moral remains the same: You can’t believe everything you hear.

Or see, it turns out. “When Photos Lie” in Scholastic News magazine examines the rise of doctored photography and its dissemination online. Photo-editing software makes it possible to insert a shark into a flooded street scene, but it’s not real, despite the viral success of such a photo on social media. 

These hoaxes — often harmless and made for laughs — can take a troublesome turn when they are intended to spread lies or make people look bad. People generally believe what they see, so a photo can be edited to inflame or manipulate emotions about topics that people have strong opinions about, like politics. John Silva of the News Literacy Project has a simple self-check tactic for stopping the spread of fake photos: If it looks unbelievable, it probably is.

Examples of Fact vs. Fake for Middle School Readers:

Stealing someone else’s photos on social media for personal gain is just as easy as posting altered photos online. In the novel Fake, Maisie becomes fed up with being the butt of everyone’s jokes at school, so she creates a fake online profile of beautiful, confident “Sienna” to get back at them. But what will happen when the real Sienna, whose photos Maisie has been using, shows up? It’s a story straight from the headlines — and one middle school students will relate to.

The creation of fake profiles is part of a larger problem: “fake news,” which refers to made-up information posted online and distributed via social media, often in return for advertising dollars. That’s right: As false content is circulated — often by believers — someone somewhere is profiting from the clicks, views, and shares.

“Which One is #FakeNews?” in Scholastic Choices magazine offers a brief history of phony content dating back to the 1700s, when tabloid newspapers in France peddled false stories about Queen Marie Antoinette to get a rise out of readers. Not much has changed, but a new generation of tech-savvy programmers is making it their mission to crack down on fake news using artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, though, the responsibility falls on readers to detect fact from fake. The Scholastic Choices article concludes with a series of steps young readers can take to verify the accuracy of a news story, including vetting the site’s URL and “About Us” page, and identifying shoddy workmanship like spelling errors or missing photo credits.

Visit the Scholastic Bookshelf for more resources on fact versus fake. If you’re planning to talk with your child about other complex topics and seek tips or book recommendations, visit our Tough Topics hub. You’ll find a wealth of advice from Scholastic editors to help you navigate challenging conversations thoughtfully. Recent topic additions include:

• Empathy
• Anxiety
• Rejection