Two Colorado lawmakers want to make sure kids can identify misinformation on the internet.
Now that kids have easy access to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, the state representatives want to help students differentiate between what's 'fake news' and credible media.
"Whenever somebody starts off a sentence with ‘I read somewhere that this happened’, you think, wait a minute. I think we all need to be a little distrustful about where people are getting their information," State Rep. Barbara McLachlan told CBS4.
McLachlan, who was a school teacher before she became a state lawmaker, says kids who get their news exclusively online are especially vulnerable to misinformation.
That's why McLachlan and State Rep. Lisa Cutter are promoting a bill to improve media literacy in kids.
The bill will help teachers incorporate media literacy into their curriculum from an online bank of media literacy resources in the Department of Education.
“We don’t want to teach kids what to think,” Cutter told CBS4. “We’re not taking a stand that one side is right and another is wrong, or one outlet is good and one outlet is bad. We just want to give them the tools so they can figure it out and understand what makes a credible source and then they can form their own opinions about that information.”
Cutter has had past success with this issue. Two years ago she passed a law to establish a task force to study media literacy.
“There’s outside entities that are trying to sow distrust in public health, in vaccines. They’ve traced some of that to China, Russia with election meddling," she said. "So I absolutely, firmly believe this will lead to a healthier democracy and society."
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