More than ever, teenagers are accrediting their knowledge of current events to news sources such as Facebook and Snapchat, according to Elle Hunt from the Guardian. This dependency on social media platforms for news by younger generations has spurred a phenomenon of “fake news”, or the sharing of misleading and sometimes outlandishly incorrect headlines.

These articles not only misinform but seek to dismantle ideas or reputations with little regards to the truth. The fake news imitates “real news” in format and millennials as well as politicians such as Donald Trump have shared these misleading headlines.

Facebook is a popular site for obtaining headlines, and recent investigations have revealed an alarming amount of lies and “fake news” being delivered from this source. According to Leigh Kolb from schooljournalism.org, after Facebook replaced their editors with algorithms because of bias complaints, more and more fake headlines have slipped through the website.

However “fake news” does not stay on the internet. It may lead to very serious consequences such as the situation now known as “pizzagate”.

According to Hunt, a Washington D.C. pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong, was linked to an online conspiracy claiming Hillary Clinton’s involvement in running a child sex ring. The pizzeria’s initials “CP” was seen as code for “child pornography”. Ultimately, a man open fired on the pizzeria on December 4, 2016; the twenty-five year old gunman claimed to have been conducting his own investigation into the matter.

Kolb has stated an increasing amount of high school students are finding it harder to recognize fake news, and it is important to prevent the propagation of these articles.