In my previous article “Online Bots: When Accounts Aren’t Who They Seem,” we talked about bots and how manufactured voices can flood the internet with misleading content. But what happens when you actually want to check whether something you found online is trustworthy? For most of us, the instinct is to look more closely at the page in front of us. Researchers have discovered that this instinct, however natural, is exactly the wrong approach. The people who are best at evaluating online information do something completely different. They leave.
How Experts Actually Read
In a landmark study published in 2019, Stanford researchers Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew compared how three groups evaluated online sources: professional fact checkers, university historians with PhDs, and first-year college students at Stanford.1 The results were striking. Historians and students stayed on the page, scrolling through its contents, checking the URL, clicking the About page, and analyzing the writing style. Fact checkers did something different entirely. Within seconds of landing on an unfamiliar site, they opened new tabs and began searching for what other sources had to say about it.1
This approach is called lateral reading, and it works. Compared to the historians and students, fact checkers arrived at more accurate conclusions in a fraction of the time.1 The reason is simple: a bad actor can build a website that looks polished, professional, and credible. They can write clean prose, post an impressive-sounding About page, and register a .org domain. None of those things cost much. What is much harder to fake is a strong independent reputation across the rest of the internet.
The Problem With Reading Vertically
The instinct most of us have, to read a page closely and carefully before deciding whether to trust it, has a name in research. It is called vertical reading, and it means staying within a single source, moving from top to bottom, evaluating its internal features.1 Vertical reading is not useless. For a book you already have reason to trust, or a peer-reviewed article from a known journal, deep reading is valuable. But when you do not yet know whether a source deserves your trust, reading it carefully can actually work against you. Polished misinformation is designed to reward close reading. The more time you spend inside it, the more convincing it can seem.2
Espina and Spracklin, writing about information literacy during the COVID-19 infodemic, put it plainly: vertical reading “plays right into the intent of disinformation, to capture the reader’s deep attention and misconstrue their perspective.”2 The very act of reading carefully, without first checking who is behind the content, can make us more susceptible to manipulation, not less.
What Happened When Students Were Taught This Skill
Researchers have now tested lateral reading instruction across a wide range of settings and age groups, from elementary school through adulthood, and the results are consistently encouraging.3 One important study was conducted by Joel Breakstone, Sam Wineburg, and colleagues at Stanford, who embedded lateral reading modules into an asynchronous online nutrition course at a large state university during the COVID-19 pandemic.4 Before the intervention, only 3 out of 87 students engaged in lateral reading at all. After completing four one-hour modules, 67 out of 87 did so, and average assessment scores nearly doubled.4
Classroom-based studies have shown similar results. A middle school teacher in Ohio, working with researchers Walsh-Moorman, Pytash, and Ausperk, introduced lateral reading during a Holocaust literature unit.5 After just two days of instruction and guided practice, students were independently checking author credentials, verifying quotes, and looking up the organizations behind websites, behaviors they had not shown before.5 Importantly, the research noted that students did not just follow a mechanical checklist. They developed what the researchers called a skeptical stance: a genuine desire to know more about a source before trusting it.5
The SIFT Method: A Practical Framework
One of the most teachable frameworks for lateral reading is the SIFT method, developed by digital literacy educator Mike Caulfield and adopted widely in academic settings.2 SIFT stands for four steps. Stop before reacting or sharing, especially when content triggers a strong emotion. Investigate the source by leaving the page and searching for who is behind it. Find better coverage by looking for independent reporting on the same claim. Trace claims, quotes, and media back to their original context to make sure they have not been distorted.2
Espina and Spracklin note that SIFT is not about becoming more suspicious of everything. Caulfield himself argues that blanket cynicism is actually the enemy of good information evaluation, because it leads people to treat all sources as equally bad and make decisions based on personal identity rather than evidence.2 SIFT is about being strategically skeptical: pausing when it matters, checking quickly, and moving on with more confidence once you have done so.
Why This Matters Beyond the Classroom
McGrew’s 2024 review of the lateral reading research literature makes clear that this is a skill people of all ages can develop, and that even brief instruction produces measurable gains.3 Studies have shown positive results with fourth graders, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, and older adults with a mean age of 67.3 One study found that a single one-hour module on lateral reading improved older adults’ ability to correctly identify both true and false news stories, compared to a control group that received no instruction.3
These findings matter enormously in a world where the volume of online content continues to grow and where, as Espina and Spracklin observed during the pandemic, the line between credible information and dangerous misinformation can have real consequences for health, safety, and democratic life.2 Being able to quickly step outside a source, find out who is behind it, and check whether credible outlets confirm its claims is not an advanced skill reserved for journalists. It is something every person in your household can learn, practice, and improve.
Trying Lateral Reading as a Family
The next time someone in your family comes across a claim online that seems surprising, important, or shareable, try lateral reading together before doing anything else. Open a new browser tab. Type the name of the website or the author into the search bar. Look at what other sources say about them. Are they cited by reputable outlets? Do independent sources confirm the claim, or contradict it? Does the organization behind the site have a transparent history and mission?
This process takes about two minutes once you are practiced at it. Walsh-Moorman and colleagues found that when a teacher modeled this process out loud, narrating each step as she went, students quickly began applying it on their own.5 The same principle applies at home. Showing rather than just telling, doing a lateral read out loud together at the kitchen table or on the couch, is one of the most effective things a family can do to build lasting critical thinking habits in a digital world.
Up Next: Who Actually Controls What You See?
Knowing how to evaluate a source is a powerful skill, but it only gets you so far. Before a piece of content ever reaches you, decisions have already been made about whether you will see it at all. Social media platforms are not neutral pipelines. They are built around algorithms, business models, and ownership structures that shape what rises to the top of your feed and what disappears. In our next article, we look at the power structures behind social media and ask a harder question: whose interests does the information environment actually serve?
References
1 Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121(11). https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811912101102
2 Espina, C. R., & Spracklin, E. (2022). What is information literacy in an infodemic? Nurse Education Today, 111, 105294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2022.105294
3 McGrew, S. (2024). Teaching lateral reading: Interventions to help people read like fact checkers. Current Opinion in Psychology, 55, 101737. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101737
4 Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Connors, P., Ortega, T., Kerr, D., & Wineburg, S. (2021). Lateral reading: College students learn to critically evaluate internet sources in an online course. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-56
5 Walsh-Moorman, E. A., Pytash, K. E., & Ausperk, M. (2020). Naming the moves: Using lateral reading to support students’ evaluation of digital sources. Middle School Journal, 51(5), 29–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/00940771.2020.1814622