Are today’s students able to discern quality information from sham online? In the largest investigation of its kind, we administered an assessment to 3,446 high school students. Equipped with a live internet connection, the students responded to six constructed-response tasks. The students struggled on all of them. Asked to investigate a site claiming to “disseminate factual reports” on climate science, 96% never learned about the organization’s ties to the fossil fuel industry. Two thirds were unable to distinguish news stories from ads on a popular website’s home page. More than half believed that an anonymously posted Facebook video, shot in Russia, provided “strong evidence” of U.S. voter fraud. Instead of investigating the organization or group behind a site, students were often duped by weak signs of credibility: a website’s “look,” its top-level domain, the content on its About page, and the sheer quantity of information it provided. The study’s sample reflected the demographic profile of high school students in the United States, and a multilevel regression model explored whether scores varied by student characteristics. Findings revealed differences in student abilities by grade level, self-reported grades, locality, socioeconomic status, race, maternal education, and free/reduced-price lunch status. Taken together, these findings reveal an urgent need to prepare students to thrive in a world in which information flows ceaselessly across their screens.

今天的学生是否可以在线辨别假冒的质量信息？在此类调查中，我们对3446名高中生进行了评估。配备了实时互联网连接，学生们对六个构造响应任务进行了响应。学生们都在挣扎。当被要求调查一个声称“传播事实报告”气候科学的网站时，有96％的人从未听说过该组织与化石燃料行业的关系。三分之二的人无法将新闻报道与流行网站首页上的广告区分开。超过一半的人认为，在俄罗斯拍摄的匿名张贴的Facebook视频提供了美国选民欺诈的“有力证据”。与其去调查网站背后的组织或团体，不如让学生们被信誉低下的骗子所欺骗：网站的“外观，”的顶级域，“关于”页面上的内容以及所提供的大量信息。该研究的样本反映了美国高中生的人口统计学特征，并且采用多层次回归模型探讨了分数是否因学生特征而异。调查结果显示，学生的能力因年级，自我报告的年级，地区，社会经济地位，种族，孕产妇教育和免费/低价午餐状态而异。综上所述，这些发现表明，迫切需要让学生做好准备，以在信息不断跨越其屏幕流动的世界中蓬勃发展。而多层次回归模型则探讨了分数是否因学生特征而异。调查结果显示，学生的能力因年级，自我报告的年级，地区，社会经济地位，种族，孕产妇教育和免费/低价午餐状态而异。综上所述，这些发现表明，迫切需要让学生做好准备，以在信息不断跨越其屏幕流动的世界中蓬勃发展。而多层次回归模型则探讨了分数是否因学生特征而异。调查结果显示，学生的能力因年级，自我报告的年级，地区，社会经济地位，种族，孕产妇教育和免费/低价午餐状态而异。综上所述，这些发现表明，迫切需要让学生做好准备，以在信息不断跨越其屏幕流动的世界中蓬勃发展。