The researcher Timothy Caulfield is Canada’s debunker-in-chief. He’s accused celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian of promoting false health information (apparently detoxifying isn’t a thing). He called the surge of COVID myths an “infodemic.” And last year, he was appointed a member of the Order of Canada for his efforts to combat misinformation.
Kids and teens are especially susceptible to misinformation campaigns, Caulfield says, and they lack the cognitive skills to wade through the noise. “A 2021 analysis by NewsGuard, an online tool that rates the credibility of news websites, found that kids as young as nine encounter misinformation within minutes of activating a TikTok account,” he writes. In his Big Idea essay for Maclean’s, Caulfield makes a compelling argument for why we need to teach kids how to detect misinformation, starting in kindergarten and continuing through high school and university.
—Emily Landau, executive editor
