Fake News

Ross Genetti, Staff Reporter

Not everything on the internet is believable. Students need to be more cautious in what they choose to believe online. Dishonest writers have been recently releasing false articles on Facebook, causing high school students and adults to fall under their trap.

In a Dec. 30, 2016 article “Here Are 50 Of The Biggest Fake News Hits On Facebook From 2016” on BuzzFeed.com, most of the new hoaxes on Facebook were about U.S. politics. During the last three months of the election, the top-performing fake news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets.

The effect that social media has over teens and young adults is penetrating and pulling. If adults are inclined to believe these fake news articles, teens are way more likely to believe. If teens find fake news and they believe it, they are also likely to start spreading it and causing more people to trust false news outlets.

Now that almost everything is on some sort of social media platform, there are real and true news outlets as well as fake ones. People and especially teens need to find the true sources and trust them.

CNN, FOX, and MSNBC are a few trustworthy news platforms that doesn’t promote fake news.

Fake news is plaguing the nation. The cure is for students to dig deeper than Facebook for news.