Finally, A Tool that Unlocks Information Literacy for Students

by Jeff Walsh, CEO and founder of Sooth.fyi

A growing trend on Instagram is Gen Z’ers asking “is this story real?” in response to content surfacing in their feeds. They’re smart to ask. An unprecedented number of new forces are reshaping our entire information ecosystem. If the internet created the infrastructure that supercharged information flow, these new forces are heavily influencing the kind of information that’s flowing.

Conversational AI products like ChatGPT (or Gemini, CoPilot, etc.) clearly top the list. They can be phenomenal with discrete, timeconsuming tasks or answering basic questions. Just don’t confuse their confidence with competence when it comes to complex or nuanced queries. Even if a response is free of errors or fabrications, it should be considered much like Wikipedia – an ok starting point, not an end point. (Side note: Wiki editors recently formed “WikiProject AI Cleanup” to combat the increasing amount of AIgenerated content surfacing across the site.)

As STEM leaders, we know it’s not just about getting the right answer. The more important consideration is the critical thinking that goes into arriving at the answer. Conversational AI tools threaten to sidestep this process, especially when exploring important topics that are shaping our world.

Another important consideration, however, is this technology’s widespread accessibility. Generating reams of misinformation can now be accomplished with the click of a button (according to NewsGuard, there are already over 1,000 AI-generated unreliable news sites.) Mass proliferation of AI generated content has already started to circle back on itself, resurfacing as answers to user queries. Finally, ingestion and regurgitation of copyrighted work – in particular, well-researched news stories – is putting publishers at risk of losing much-needed site traffic and subscription revenue.

That’s bad timing for publishers because Americans’ trust in the mass media is already at an all-time low, according to Gallup. But are Americans truly untrusting of the news, or are they just seeking views that emphasize facts they consider more important? Do we even acknowledge the difference between truth and bias? It can get complicated; catering to audiences and advertisers may lead to relegation of journalistic standards in some cases.

One way to ensure media survival might be through more subscriptions. But according to the Reuters Institute, only 22% of Americans paid for any news last year and most Americans are unwilling to pay for more news. That probably explains why 67% of Americans rely on social media as their main source of online news. Here, it’s worth quoting from the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.”

Make no mistake, this is all bad news for students and educators. Not only do these new forces heighten the urgency for teaching information literacy, but they simultaneously render it more difficult to do so. We are at risk of a future where simply finding and accessing credible, original human insights and facts becomes a herculean task. Is it responsible to burden our educators and students with such an unedifying challenge?

This is exactly why we built Sooth.fyi, the only internet search and digital literacy platform specifically designed for students.

A beautifully designed and intuitive interface that surfaces diverse insights into today’s pressing issues. All content retrieved comes exclusively from thousands of the internet’s most reliable and diverse sources of news, research, data, and insights. Zero distractions from ads, chatbots, dubious or commercial content. Students can immediately verify a source’s reliability (using NewsGuard’s Reliability Ratings) and bias (using AllSides Media Bias RatingsTM), access all the content – including articles typically behind paywalls – build research collections, take notes, generate Works Cited, and collaborate with others. Educators can seamlessly auto rewrite content into different reading levels. Students can monitor their information diets to ensure engagement from a wide variety of source types and perspectives. When confronted with potentially dubious information, they can verify it using a oneof-a-kind Misinformation Toolkit. And when a break is needed, they can scroll the latest headlines across a range of topics on our news aggregator, Pulse, instead of “doomscrolling” on social media.

Written by Jeff Walsh, CEO and founder of Sooth. fyi. To schedule a demo, receive a quote, or if you just want more information, Jeff can be reached at jeff.walsh@sooth.fyi.