A shocking post
A post says something alarming has happened at a school near you. It has been shared thousands of times. Your friends are all messaging about it.
What do you do?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
A photo with a caption
A dramatic photo is captioned as being from an event this week. Something about it feels off.
How do you check?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
Find where it started. Most viral claims trace back to one post, and fifteen accounts repeating it is still one source.
Independent means separately
Three outlets that all quote the same tweet are not three sources. Ask whether each one found out on its own.
Strong feelings are a signal
If something makes you furious or delighted immediately, that is a good moment to slow down. Things designed to spread are designed to do that.
Old pictures, new stories
A very common trick is a real photo from a different event or a different year. A reverse image search settles it in seconds.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
The Two-Minute Check
Tap the steps in the most useful order.
Something shocking appears in your feed.
- 1Look at who posted it
- 2Find where the claim started
- 3See if independent sources report it
- 4Only then decide whether to share
- 5Notice you had a strong reaction
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
Twelve accounts have posted the same claim. How many sources is that?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Walk one back
- Find something being shared a lot this week.
- Trace it to the earliest post you can find.
- Count how many genuinely independent sources there are.
Why: The count is usually one, and finding that out once changes how you read a feed.
Step 6: What You Learned
- Find where the claim started.
- Three sources only count if they found out separately.
- A strong reaction is a signal to slow down, not to share.
For the grown-up
The emotional-reaction point is the most transferable idea here. Material engineered to spread is engineered to bypass evaluation, and noticing the bypass is more reliable than assessing each claim.
Doing one check together, on something real and current, is worth more than the principle. Walking a viral claim back to its origin is genuinely interesting.
Aim for calibration rather than cynicism. A young person who concludes nothing can be known is no better off than one who believes everything.