Recently the New York Times reported the following:
The Class Where ‘Screenagers’ Train to Navigate Social
Media and A.I. (1/2)
New technologies are complicating efforts to teach the
scrolling generation to think critically and defensively online.
By Tiffany Hsu
Dec. 25, 2025
Most teenagers know that baseless conspiracy theories,
partisan propaganda and artificially generated deepfakes lurk on social media.
Valerie Ziegler’s students know how to spot them.
At Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco, she trains her government, economy and history students to consult a variety of sources, recognize rage-baiting content and consider influencers’ motivations. They brainstorm ways to distinguish deepfakes from real footage.
Ms. Ziegler, 50, is part of a vanguard of California educators racing to prepare students in a rapidly changing online world. Content moderation policies have withered at many social media platforms, making it easier to lie and harder to trust. Artificial intelligence is evolving so quickly, and generating such persuasive content, that even professionals who specialize in detecting its presence are being stumped.
California is ahead of many other states in pushing schools to teach digital literacy, but even there, education officials are not expected to set specific standards until later in 2026. So Ms. Ziegler and a growing group of her peers are forging ahead, cobbling together lesson plans from nonprofit groups and updating older coursework to address new technologies, such as the artificial intelligence that powers video apps like Sora. Their methods are hands-on, including classroom exercises that fact-check posts about history on TikTok and explore how badges that appear to signal verification on social media can often be bought rather than earned.
Teachers and librarians around the country have long tried to prepare students for the pitfalls of being online, but the past few years have underscored for educators just how much of their work increasingly involves playing catch-up with a moving target.
Ms. Ziegler’s efforts showcase the difficulties of keeping pace with new social media platforms, apps and advances in A.I.
Social media literacy is a tough subject for schools to try to teach, especially now. Federal funding for education is precarious, and the Trump administration has politicized and penalized the study of disinformation and misinformation. A.I. is becoming pervasive in the educational system, available to younger and younger children, even as its dangers to students and educators become increasingly clear.
The News Literacy Project, a media education nonprofit, surveyed 1,110 teenagers in May last year and found that four in 10 said they had any media literacy instruction in class that year. Eight in 10 said they had come across a conspiracy theory on social media — including false claims that the 2020 election was rigged — and many said they were inclined to believe at least one of the narratives.
Ms. Ziegler teaches the self-described “screenagers” in her classes that their social media feeds are populated using highly responsive algorithms, and that large followings do not make accounts trustworthy. In one case, the students learned to distinguish between a reputable historians group on Instagram and a historical satire account with a similar name. Now, they default to double-checking information that interests them online.
“That’s the starting point,” said Xavier Malizia, 17.
Ms. Ziegler first tried to teach A.I. literacy last year by testing out a new module from the Digital Inquiry Group, a nonprofit literacy organization. She relies heavily on collaborations, often consulting with her school’s librarian or using free resources from CRAFT, an A.I. literacy project from Stanford University.
Riley Huang, 17, said she had recently been nearly, but not quite, duped by artificially generated clips that portrayed Jake Paul, a popular boxer and influencer, as a gay man applying cosmetics. Elisha Tuerk-Levy, 18, said it was “jarring” to watch a realistic A.I. video of someone falling off Mount Everest, but added that the visuals in such videos were often too smooth — a useful “tell” that helps identify them as fake.
“It’s kind of scary, because we still have a lot more to see,” Zion said. “I feel like this is just the beginning.”
(to be continued)
Translation
培訓課程教導「螢幕世代」如何駕馭社交媒體與人工智能（1/2）
新科技使得教導「螢幕世代」進行批判性思考和網路防禦變得更加複雜。
大多數青少年都知道，社交媒體上充斥著毫無根據的陰謀論、黨派宣傳和人工智能生成的深度偽造影片。Valerie Ziegler的學生們知道如何識別它們。
在舊金山的亞伯拉罕林肯高中，她指導她的政治、經濟和歷史課學生去查閱各種資訊來源，識別煽動憤怒的內容，並思考網路紅人的動機。他們集思廣益，探討如何區分深度偽造影片和真實影片。
現年50歲的Ziegler女士是加州眾多致力於幫助學生適應快速變化的網路世界的教育工作者之一。許多社交媒體平台的內容審核政策日漸式微，導致謊言更容易傳播，但信任度更低。人工智能發展如此迅速，並能產生如此具說服力的內容, 連專門檢測人工智能的專家也束手無策。
加州在推動學校進行數位素養教育方面領先許多其他州，但即便如此，加州教育官員預計也要到2026年稍後才會制定具體標準。因此，Ziegler女士和越來越多的同行現正在積極推進這項工作，他們整合非營利組織的課程計劃，並更新舊課程內容，以應對為 Sora 等視訊應用提供支援的人工智能。他們的教學方法著重於實踐，包括課堂練習，例如核實TikTok上關於歷史的帖子，以及探索社交媒體上看似代表驗證身分的徽章，實際上往往是購買而來，而非透過努力獲得。
國內各地的教師和圖書館員長期以來一直努力幫助學生應對網路世界的種種陷阱，但過去幾年發生的事情讓教育工作者們更加深刻地意識到，他們的工作越來越多地變成了疲於奔命地追趕不斷變動的目標。
Ziegler女士的經歷凸顯了去跟上新興社交媒體平台、應用程式和人工智能發展步伐的難度。
曾是加州年度教師的Ziegler女士說道:「我們把孩子們送入社會，理應讓他們掌握必要的技能」; 「棘手的是，我們成年人和孩子們一樣，也在學習這些技能」。
社交媒體的理解和運用對學校來說是一個棘手的課題，尤其是在當下。聯邦政府的教育經費捉襟見肘，而特朗普政府又將假訊息和錯誤訊息的研究政治化並加以懲罰。人工智能正在教育系統中日益普及，越來越多的孩子開始接觸它，儘管它對學生和教育工作者的傷害也日益顯現。
新聞素養計劃（News Literacy Project）是一家媒體教育非謀利組織，在去年五月對1,110名青少年進行了調查，發現十分之四的人表示當年在課堂上曾接受過媒體素養方面的教育。十分之八的人表示他們在社群媒體上接觸過陰謀論 - 包括關於2020年大選被操縱的虛假說法 - 而且許多人表示他們傾向於相信其中至少一種說法。
Ziegler女士在她的課堂上教導這些自稱「螢幕世代」的青少年，他們的社交媒體訊息流是由高度敏感的演算法推送的，有大量的粉絲並不代表帳號就值得信賴。例如，學生學會了去區分Instagram上一個信譽良好的歷史學家小組和一個名稱相似的歷史諷刺帳號。現在，他們習慣在網路上核實自己感興趣的資訊。
17歲的Xavier Malizia說: 「這是起點」。
去年，Ziegler女士首次嘗試教授人工智能素養，她試用了來自非谋利素養組織「數位探究小組」（Digital Inquiry Group）的新模組。她非常信賴合作，經常諮詢學校圖書館員, 或使用史丹佛大學人工智能讀寫計劃CRAFT所提供的免費資源。
17歲的Riley Huang說，她最近差點被一些人工智能生成的影片騙了，這些影片把人氣拳擊手兼網紅Jake Paul描繪成一個正在化妝的同性戀男子。 18歲的Elisha Tuerk-Levy說，觀看一段逼真的人工智能視頻，例如有人從珠穆朗瑪峰上摔下來，感覺 “很嚇人” ，但她補充說，這類視頻的畫面通常過於流暢 - 這是一個有助於識別其虛假性的 “破綻” 。
17歲的Zion
Sharpe指出，人工智能生成的影片似乎經常來自一些帳號，這些帳號的所有貼文都由同一個人發佈，穿著同樣的衣服，說著同樣的語調和節奏。
Zion說: 「這有點嚇人，因為我們還有很多事情沒經歷」; 「我覺得這只是個開始」。
（待續）
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