The increasing polarization in the United States has become apparent, and confirmation bias facilitated through social media only makes this worse. People tend to tune into news organizations, both online and otherwise, that reinforce our biases and worldviews, even when these organizations use sensationalist and often-false information, which is incentivized by our consumption. A lot of online media consumption means that those who are not critically examining their sources can fall into a dark internet abyss of made-up stories, which results in a multitude of negative consequences, starting with misguided support for public policy proposals and ending with careless disregard for the concept of truth and evidence.

A study on civic online reasoning conducted at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education assessed young people’s ability to discriminate credible from deceptive sources. The researchers found that elementary school and college students alike displayed incompetence in evaluating the reliability of sources. While younger Americans might be seen as technology-savvy, their familiarity with social media platforms does not translate into media literacy. But why would we even make this connection in the first place? Proficiently navigating extremely user-friendly social media platforms should have never been an indicator of satisfactory information research skills.

But the lack of media literacy not only affects youth — many Americans of all ages are falling into the same traps. In fact, Donald J. Trump, the 45^th U.S. president, habitually uses faulty information that he shares with his millions of followers on Twitter. In the past, Trump has cited Breitbart news — a hyper-partisan news source — as his source for saying that “thousands of Muslims cheered 911”. In addition, he has shared unsubstantiated claims about widespread voter fraud, as well as retweeted inaccurate intra- and inter-racial crime information, which cited a non-existent agency as its source.

While these instances are troubling in and of themselves — especially coming from the U.S. president — what’s worse is that these baseless claims are being used as evidence of danger, leading to public support of increased surveillance, voter suppression, and more disproportionate and enhanced targeting of minorities by the police, as if pre-Trump America did not already do enough of this. When on NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump was probed about the validity of his information, and he infamously replied that he “…only know[s] what’s on the internet.”

And Donald J. Trump’s exploitation of fake news goes beyond using false information to drive a narrative. He and some of his political appointees have come to habitually engage in attacks on the media. Trump is uncharacteristically concerned with veracity only when discussing what he calls the “dishonest” media. As is commonplace in Trump’s speech, he has begun to use insults that attack success and legitimacy whenever he refers to something he dislikes. In this case, he has come to frequently utilize phrases such as “the failing New York Times” and “fake news CNN.”

American people have taken notice. While Americans might disagree on who is to blame for the antagonistic relationship between Trump and the media, according to Pew Research Center, one thing is clear: an overwhelming majority of American adults – 83 percent – would agree that the relationship between Donald J. Trump and the media is unhealthy. These attacks are not inconsequential, as they serve both to lay the foundation upon which advocacy for censorship is not far-fetched, but also create ambiguity about what is and is not true and about what sources are and are not valid.

Just as there are better and worse ways to get information, there are better and worse ways to respond to the inescapable fact that the digital age is here to stay. Since people will continue to spend a significant time online, media literacy is increasingly important. One way is to ignore the problem and another is to follow what some schools have been doing by creating filters that direct students to already vetted websites. However, these strategies fail to teach students what to do when they approach information that they will inevitably see in front of them. A better way is to teach students to become better consumers of what news they already see, read, or listen to. The News Literacy Project, for example, has developed media literacy curricula that are being implemented in pilot programs throughout many states.

Every school district should recognize why media literacy is important to every child, and take steps to teach our students how to evaluate the authority, currency, reliability, bias, intent, and validity of the information in front of them. Media literacy is critical to our democracy, allowing students to discern fact from fiction, and to avoid believing the false equivalencies that some politicians are so forcefully demanding.