Media Literacy Facts & Myth-Busters

If a headline makes you furious, it was designed to. Both sides do this. Take a breath.

Your feed only shows you stuff you already agree with. That's true for literally everyone.

That shocking photo? Might be from 5 years ago, a different country, or literally AI.

The angrier a post makes you, the more likely someone *wants* you angry. Don't be free labor.

AI can write a convincing article, fake a photo, and clone a voice. In about 30 seconds.

Screenshots of posts and tweets can be easily faked. If you can't find the original source, treat it with s...

Clickbait formula: [SHOCKING THING] + [EMOTIONAL WORD] + 'You Won't Believe...' = 💰 for them

Foreign troll farms post stuff to make BOTH sides fight harder. Don't take the bait.

Outrage is a business model. Every side has influencers who profit from your anger.

A post going viral doesn't mean it's true. It means it's engaging. Those are different.

Ask: Who benefits if I believe this? That works on EVERY source, from ANY direction.

Just because it's a video doesn't mean it's real. Deepfakes are getting wild out there.

A photo being in black and white doesn't mean it's old. Filters exist. Context clues matter more than color.

Viral 'leaked documents' are often recycled from old stories with new dates slapped on. Always check the or...

A headline ending in a question mark is often a claim the article can't actually back up. Betteridge's Law:...

If an article cites 'a study' without linking it, search for the actual study. Sometimes it doesn't say wha...

Outrage spreads faster than calm explanations online. If something makes you furious in under 3 seconds, it...

Quote cards with no source, just a name and a fancy font, are often fabricated. Real quotes have citations.

Before sharing a shocking statistic, ask: compared to what? Numbers without context can mean almost anything.

Old photos get recirculated during new events constantly. A reverse image search takes 10 seconds and can s...

Anonymous accounts with no posting history suddenly going viral is a common pattern for coordinated campaig...

Translated quotes can shift meaning significantly. If a 'shocking' quote comes from a foreign-language sour...

A statistic shared as 'current' that's actually 10 years old is one of the most common ways old data mislea...

Satire sites exist and get shared as real news constantly. If a headline sounds absurd, check if the site i...

Email forwards claiming Bill Gates will pay you for forwarding have circulated since the 1990s in various f...

Carrots improve your eyesight? Nope. British WWII propaganda to hide their secret radar tech from the Germa...

"You only use 10% of your brain." Total myth. Brain scans show you use virtually all of it. Been fooling pe...

Napoleon was short? He was actually 5'7" — average for his time. British newspapers made up the 'short' thi...

Vikings wore horned helmets? Nope. A costume designer made that up for a Wagner opera in 1876.

Diamonds are rare? De Beers stockpiled them to create artificial scarcity, then ran ads saying you need one...

"Goldfish have a 3-second memory." They actually remember things for months. Scientists trained them to pus...

In 1835, the New York Sun published articles about bat-people living on the moon. People believed it.

Sugar makes kids hyper? Multiple studies say no. Parents just expect it, so they notice more. Classic confi...

Humans swallow 8 spiders a year in their sleep? A writer made it up in 1993 to show how fast fake facts spr...

"Einstein failed math." He didn't. He mastered calculus by 15. A newspaper got it wrong in 1935.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day? A cereal company invented that slogan in 1917 to sell more...

"Lemmings run off cliffs." Disney staged that scene in a 1958 documentary. They literally pushed the lemmings.

MSG is bad for you? That myth came from one letter to a medical journal in 1968. No study has ever confirme...

In 1917, two girls faked photos of fairies. Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes' creator) believed them.

Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis? A doctor cracked only one hand for 60 years to test it. No differe...

"We only have 5 senses." Scientists count up to 21+, including balance, temperature, and proprioception. Ar...

The BBC's 'Spaghetti Tree' segment convinced thousands that pasta grows on trees. It aired April 1st and pe...

The 'War of the Worlds' radio panic was wildly exaggerated — by newspapers. Print media wanted to discredit...

Lightning absolutely can strike the same place twice. The Empire State Building gets hit around 25 times a ...

The Titanic wasn't called 'unsinkable' by its builders — that was newspaper marketing language. The shipyar...

You don't lose most of your body heat through your head. That myth came from a flawed 1950s Army study wher...

Bulls aren't enraged by the color red — they're red-green colorblind. It's the movement of the cape that tr...

NASA didn't spend millions on a 'space pen' while Russians used pencils. Both sides used pencils first — fl...

Chameleons don't change color mainly for camouflage. It's mostly about mood, temperature regulation, and co...

Swallowed gum doesn't stay in your stomach for 7 years. It passes through your system like everything else,...

Columbus didn't prove the Earth was round — educated Europeans already knew that. He was actually wrong abo...

Ostriches don't bury their heads in sand. They lie flat against the ground when scared, which from a distan...

The moon landing flag 'waving' wasn't wind — it was the astronauts twisting the pole to plant it in the gro...

Eating before swimming doesn't cause dangerous cramps. The 'wait 30 minutes' rule has no real medical evide...

Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster. Mary Shelley's creature is left nameless in the original novel.

Sharks have been around longer than trees — about 100 million years longer. They survived every mass extinc...

The 'Mozart Effect' — classical music makes babies smarter — came from one small 1993 study that's never be...

Bats aren't blind. Most bat species can see just fine — they just also use echolocation for hunting in the ...

'Rain of frogs' is a real phenomenon — waterspouts and strong winds can pick up small animals and deposit t...

The Mayflower Pilgrims didn't wear all-black outfits with buckled hats — that's a 19th-century artistic inv...

Fleming discovering penicillin 'by accident' is true, but it took 12 more years and a full research team to...

The 5-second rule for dropped food doesn't protect you — bacteria transfer almost instantly on contact with...

Daddy long-legs aren't the world's most venomous spiders with fangs too small to pierce skin. That's an urb...

The Great Molasses Flood was completely real. In 1919, a Boston tank burst and sent 2 million gallons of mo...

You don't need to wait an hour after eating before exercising. That advice has been dropped by most sports ...

Napoleon's army didn't shoot off the Sphinx's nose. Drawings made before Napoleon was even born already sho...

Octopuses have three hearts and blue blood — two hearts stop beating when they swim, which is why they pref...

The Eiffel Tower grows up to 6 inches taller in summer due to thermal expansion of the iron. It shrinks bac...

Shaving doesn't make hair grow back thicker or faster. The blunt edge just feels coarser — the hair itself ...

The Tunguska event flattened 800 square miles of Siberian forest with no crater — likely an asteroid that e...

A group of flamingos is called a 'flamboyance.' This is real. Scientists had a great day naming that one.

Tomatoes weren't banned in America for being poisonous. Wealthy diners were getting lead poisoning from aci...

The 'flat earth society' headline resurfaces every few years implying membership is growing. It's always be...

Carrots helping night vision is WWII British propaganda — used to explain why RAF pilots spotted enemy plan...

Sugar doesn't make kids hyperactive. Multiple controlled studies found no link — parental expectation drive...