Anyone can put anything online. There is no giant machine that checks the internet for truth before a page appears — a scientist, a shop trying to sell you trainers, a joker making things up, and a person who is simply mistaken can all publish a page that looks exactly as neat and confident as the others. So the big question is never just "what does it say?" but "can I trust who is saying it, and why?"
A source is wherever a piece of information comes from: a website, a video, a book, a post, a person. A reliable source is one you have good reason to trust; an unreliable source is one you don't. Learning to tell them apart is one of the most useful skills you will ever pick up — and it is a skill, not a magic sense, so let's build it.
Before you believe something — or share it — put it on trial. Ask these five questions. None of them alone proves a source is good or bad, but together they give you a strong feel for whether to trust it.
Think of it as WWWEB: Who, Why, When, Evidence, Bias. Run a page through all five and you are thinking like a detective, not a sponge.
Look for the author. Is it a named expert — a doctor writing about health, a historian writing about history? Is it a respected organisation, like a university, a national health service, a museum, or an encyclopaedia that lists its sources? Or is it anonymous — no name, no "About us" page, no way to know who is behind it?
An anonymous page isn't automatically wrong, but it gives you nothing to check. A named expert or a trusted organisation is accountable: their reputation is on the line, so they have a reason to get it right. If you can't find out who wrote something, treat it with extra care.
Every source is made for a reason, and the reason shapes what it tells you. Broadly, a page is trying to do one of three things:
A page that wants to sell or persuade isn't lying just because of that — but it is only ever going to show you the side that helps its goal. If you want the whole picture, you need sources that are trying to inform, and you need more than one of them.
Look for a date. Facts go stale. The best treatment for an illness, the number of moons we've found around a planet, the fastest runner in the world, the population of a city — all of these change over time. A brilliant, correct article from ten years ago can be quietly wrong today, not because anyone lied, but because the world moved on.
A trustworthy source usually shows when it was written or last updated. If a page hides its date, that's a small warning flag — you can't tell whether you're reading today's picture or yesterday's.
A strong source doesn't just assert things; it backs them up. Does it cite its sources — link to research, name where its figures came from, quote real experts? Claims with evidence you can follow are far more trustworthy than a bare "trust me".
The most powerful move of all is cross-checking (also called corroboration): do several independent sources agree? "Independent" is the key word. Ten websites that all copied the same original post are not ten pieces of evidence — they're one, repeated. But if a museum, a science journal, and a national newspaper that did their own work all say the same thing, that agreement is genuinely strong.
This is exactly how information spreads — and how mistakes spread — across a
Misinformation is false information that spreads — sometimes by accident (someone got it wrong and shared it in good faith), sometimes on purpose (that's often called disinformation, made to deceive). "Fake news" is the everyday name for stories that are simply invented, often dressed up to look like real news.
Bias means leaning one way — showing one side of a story and hiding the other. Bias isn't always a lie; a true fact can still be told in a slanted way ("Our team played brilliantly!" leaves out that they lost). Watch for tricks that bypass your thinking:
Suppose a post says: "BREAKING: our school is banning homework forever!!" It's exciting, it's exactly what you'd love to hear, and it's spreading fast. Run WWWEB on it. Who posted it — a real school account, or "cool_memes_2011"? Why — to inform, or just to get shares and laughs? When — is there even a date? Evidence — does it link to a letter from the head teacher, and does the school's own website say the same? Bias — is it built to make you excited so you share before checking? Almost every made-up story falls apart the moment you ask these calmly.
A slick, professional-looking website and a calm, confident tone do not make something true. Anyone can buy a smart-looking web design, and the most convincing con is the one that sounds the most sure of itself. Looking trustworthy and being trustworthy are completely different things. Never judge a source by how polished it looks or how confidently it speaks — judge it by the author, the date, the evidence, and whether other trustworthy sources agree.
You don't have to be suspicious of everything and trust nothing — that's just as unhelpful as believing everything. The goal is to be a thoughtful reader: pause before you believe or share, run the five questions, and cross-check anything important against a few independent sources you already have reason to trust. Do that, and the internet becomes what it should be — the most powerful library ever built, with you as the librarian who knows which shelves to trust.