BUFFALO, N.Y. — Pushing back against misinformation and disinformation has to start young, according to Pauline Hoffmann, associate professor at the Jandoli School of Communication at St. Bonaventure University.

“Kids are just natural sponges, too, and they have this incredible curiosity,” said Hoffmann. 

The goal to teach kids how to verify information and identify facts is not just to make them more educated, it’s also to help bridge the gap partially created by disinformation, which is intentionally misleading information.

“So when you've got this divide, and I'll speak about the partisan divide we have in the U.S., you have people who really want some things to be true," said Hoffmann. "And so if you really want it to be true, you might not do that due diligence."

Hoffmann recently published a book called "Fake News, Witch Hunts, and Conspiracy Theories: An Infodemiologist's Guide to the Truth."

“I've been screaming about literacies, whether it's media literacy, science literacy, health literacy, you know, fill in the blank literacy, for ages, too, because I think that we are woefully uneducated in a lot of areas," she said.

Teachers at Elmwood Franklin School in Buffalo said it can be challenging to get students to look beyond the AI-generated answers Google now provides in order to cite their sources.

“Seventh-graders nowadays all have phones,” said history teacher Michelle Burgard. “We want instant gratification rather than having to read a little bit further and deeper into the information that we get.” 

She said she sees success when she can encourage students to make creative projects with their sources, rather than just writing essays.

In fourth grade, Leigh Mikulka is also teaching students not to rely on AI-generated responses in class. Additionally, when students are having conversations and she overhears something that might not be true, she uses it as a teachable moment.

“I know that some of them are watching TV. A lot of it comes from the internet and it's frequently unchecked,” said Mikulka. “So some of the things that you hear in the classroom are a little bit wild. And then we talk about where they found that information.”

Mikulka said her students use databases like Gale and Worldbook Online to help them find reputable sources.