Today’s teens have grown up online. They socialize online. They do homework online. And surely they get their news online. But because they are so comfortable with the Internet, they seldom question the news stories online and pass along to their friends.

Now William Colglazier, a history teacher at a high school in America, is teaching his students how to think critically about online information and recognize a “fake news” story. His idea came from a study on people’s online reasoning at Stanford University. The study found that young people lack ability to reason about the information on the Internet. Most middle school students in the study could not tell the difference between an advertisement and a news story, and high school and college students fully trusted the websites ending in “org”.

The good news is that, according to Colglazier, once teens realize they’ve been duped, they have strong will to tell truth from lies. “But they need some pointers on how to find dependable and persuasive evidence and how to recognize when others use poor argumentation,” he said. Some of the pointers that Colglazier offers his students include moving off the site to find more information about the site and the writer’s motivations, looking past the first page of results in a Google search and looking at the second or third page, and going beyond the “About Us” page on a website to find out more about the organization behind the news story.

Colglazier has tips for parents as well. He says it’s a good idea for parents to be “friends” with their kids on social media to see what stories they are sharing. He also suggests parents watch their teens as they search for something online and ask questions like “Why did you click on that?” and “Do you trust this information?” Those questions can lead kids to form habits of thinking critically about online information.

Colglazier shared some of his course with other teens in Teen Vogue, a famous magazine. He hopes more kids would take away some knowledge about thinking critically when they read news online. “The Internet is both beautiful and ugly,” he said. “If people cannot tell real news from fake news, the results can be frightening.”

"I sometimes get up at three or four in the morning and I surf the net."

"I often check my e-mail forty times a day."

"I often spend more than three hours during one time on the net."

"I spend more time in chat rooms than with my 'real-life' friends."       

Do you know any people like these? They are part of a new addiction(瘾）called Internet addiction. Internet addicts spend at least thirty to forty hours online every week. The use of the Internet can be an addiction like drug（毒品）use. People lose control（控制）of the time they spend on the Internet. For example, one college student was missing for a few days. His friends are worried, and they call the police. The police find the student in the computer room: he was surfing the net for a few days.

Studies show that about 6-10% of Internet users become addicted. And people worry about the teens because the Internet is changing the playing field for some of them. They spend more time in cyberspace than in the real world of friends and family.

Is "surfing the net" a hobby or an addiction for you? You may have a problem if you have these symptoms:

*You do not go to important family activities or you do not do school work because you like to spend hours on the Internet.

*You can't wait for your next online time.

*You plan to spend a short time online, but then you spend several hours.

*You go out with your friends less and less.