by Maldita.es (Maldita Educa), Spain.
What is the difference between facts or opinions? How can I identify a reliable source? Could this poster in my favourite video game be advertising? What should I do if a colleague sends me a racist meme? These are some of the questions regarding media literacy that children who decide to explore El laberinto de la información (The Labyrinth of Information) will face.
The Labyrinth of Information has an innovative educational itinerary, designed by Maldita.es, Educaixa and Verificat, for students aged 8 to 12, which gives teachers the necessary tools to work on media education and teach students to detect and stop disinformation. This gamified tool designed with Genially offers a series of interactive challenges in which students, accompanied by three explorers—Mel, Ever and Ari—must go through a maze full of challenges.
During the journey they will have the help of the “Brains”, their critical thinking assistants. In addition to the educational itinerary, the tool brings extra resources and activities for educators and families.
The explorers will face topics such as information and disinformation, data verification, advertising and bias, as well as digital coexistence. For now, it’s available in Spanish and Catalan. The development of The Labyrinth of Information responds to a critical need identified through Maldita´s personal trajectory and proven through focus groups and market analysis: the lack of proper tools in Spanish for teaching media skills for children in primary education.
Our goal: Media literacy for all audiences (starting earlier)
Maldita.es is a non-profit foundation based in Spain that builds public trust by fighting
disinformation and promoting transparency through journalism, education, technology, research and policy action. Until 2024, most of Maldita´s training offer for students was directed towards teenagers: active users of social media attending their first talk on media literacy.
Recently, in Spain, more schools have started promoting measures that limit or ban the use of mobile phones. A group of parents have gone further and joined forces to delay the start of their children’s virtual lives until they are 16 years old. Right now, the reality is that almost half of Spanish 11-year-olds have a smartphone (45.7%), a figure that jumps to 72.1% among 12 years old1. Some studies indicate that children between the ages of 8 and 12 spend about 4 hours a day on online activities such as watching videos, playing games or using social networks (time that does not include school work or housework, just leisure).
It’s a lot of time for a young user who has no training on media literacy. In the Spanish scenario, there are very few resources on media education and disinformation specifically designed for children who are in primary education. Those that exist are focused on digital literacy (learning to use programs or recognising the dangers of the online world), ignoring other dimensions such as communicative, cognitive, ethical or emotional aspects. Also, other studies show that the sooner you start working on media education, there is a greater guarantee that the results will be better2.
Inside The Labyrinth: how to activate critical thinking
Critical thinking can be the best skill to protect young children against disinformation and deception but also against anxiety, depression and other psychological problems that can be exacerbated by the incorrect use of digital media. Inside The Labyrinth, students are invited to think about what information is and to reflect on disinformation.
Younger children usually associate lies with implausible, satirical or unrealistic content, ignoring the multiplicity of motives and formats that misinformation can have.3 To solve the Labyrinth, students have to learn how to identify hoaxes but also to spot covert advertising and practise basic verification techniques.
The educational resource is divided into 4 modules that can be completed randomly and independently, with each module including 2 class sessions (50 minutes). At the end of each session, explorers earn an object that helps them get around the informational maze, such as a compass or binoculars. Teachers can choose between developing all the activities using an interactive Genially game or through a presentation version with printables worksheets. This allows the resource to be adapted to different environments. It can be self played by the students or used analogically and easily personalised by the teachers in whatever format works best for their group.
- Data from Instituto Nacional de Estadística Español (INE) ↩︎
- AEP, Sobre la edad de uso de dispositivos móviles en la infancia y la adolescencia, 2023
https://www.aeped.es/sites/default/files/comunicado_salud_digital_aep.pdf ↩︎ - Xu, S., Shtulman, A., & Young, A. G. (2022). Can Children Detect Fake News? Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 44. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9bh2z1q9 ↩︎
