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Public school students in California will soon learn media literacy skills to help them identify fake news online and distinguish ads from legitimate news stories, thanks to a new law.
The law, which requires an education commission to consider incorporating media literacy content into K-12 curricula when they’re revised after Jan. 1, was introduced in February. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it in October.
California is one of a small but growing number of states, including Texas and New Jersey, that are including media literacy skills in public education, according to a report last year from Media Literacy Now, a nonprofit group. California's new law is aimed at encouraging more discerning consumption of content on social media and digital platforms, where fake news and deepfake videos abound.
Young people are increasingly turning to social media platforms — particularly TikTok — for their news. A Pew survey this year found 32% of adults ages 18 to 29 say they regularly get news on TikTok, up from 9% in 2020.
TikTok exposes users to a variety of perspectives they might not find in traditional news media. But researchers have found that TikTok's search engine regularly displays videos rife with misinformation to users. And as we've seen in the past, the proliferation of false information on the app can have an outsize impact in the real world.