Finland Teaches Children to Detect Fake News from the Age of Three to Curb Disinformation
In response to the rise of deepfakes, Finland has incorporated artificial intelligence literacy into its national education curriculum to teach children from the age of three how to identify fake news and manipulated content.
The battle against fake news in Finland begins in preschool classrooms. For decades, the Nordic country has included media literacy—such as the ability to analyze different types of media and recognize disinformation—in its national curriculum for students starting at age three.
These lessons are part of a robust anti-disinformation program aimed at making Finns more resilient to propaganda and false claims, particularly those crossing the country’s 1,340-kilometer border with neighboring Russia.
Teachers are now required to add artificial intelligence (AI) literacy to their programs, especially after Russia intensified its disinformation campaign across Europe following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly four years ago.
Finland’s accession to NATO in 2023 also angered Moscow, although Russia has repeatedly denied interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. “We believe that strong media literacy skills are a major civic competence,” said Kiia Hakkala, an educational specialist at the City of Helsinki. “It is very important for the security of the country and for the security of our democracy,” she added.
AI Literacy Becomes a Vital Skill
At Tapanila Primary School, in a quiet neighborhood north of Helsinki, teacher Ville Vanhanen taught a group of fourth-grade students how to spot fake news. As the words “Fact or Fiction?” appeared on a television screen, student Ilo Lindgren assessed the prompt. “It’s a bit difficult,” admitted the 10-year-old.
Vanhanen explained that his students have been learning about fake news and disinformation for years, starting with headlines and short texts. In a recent lesson, fourth graders were asked to come up with five aspects to look for when consuming online news to verify its reliability. They are now moving on to AI literacy, which is quickly becoming an essential skill.
“We’ve studied how to recognize whether a photo or video has been generated by AI,” added Vanhanen, who is both a teacher and the school’s deputy principal.
Finnish media outlets also play a role, organizing the annual “Newspaper Week,” during which newspapers and other news materials are distributed to young people for reading. In 2024, Helsinki-based daily Helsingin Sanomat helped develop a new “ABC of Media Literacy,” distributed nationwide to all 15-year-olds at the start of upper secondary education.
“For us, it is essential that we are perceived as a place to obtain verified information—information that can be trusted and that is produced transparently by people you know,” said Jussi Pullinen, editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat.
Democracy Challenged by Disinformation
Media literacy has been part of Finland’s education curriculum since the 1990s, and additional courses are available for older adults, who may be particularly vulnerable to disinformation. These skills are so deeply embedded in Finnish culture that the Nordic nation, with a population of 5.6 million, frequently ranks at the top of the European Media Literacy Index. The index was compiled by the Open Society Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria, between 2017 and 2023.
“I don’t think we imagined the world would turn out this way,” said Anders Adlercreutz, Finland’s Minister of Education. “That we would be bombarded with disinformation, that our institutions would be questioned, and that our democracy would truly be put to the test through disinformation.”
With the rapid advancement of AI tools, teachers and experts are racing to help students—and the wider population—distinguish fact from falsehood.
“It is already much more difficult in the information space to identify what is real and what is not,” said Martha Turnbull, Director of Hybrid Influence at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, based in Helsinki. “At the moment, it is still relatively easy to detect AI-generated fakes because their quality is not as good as it could be.”
She added that as the technology develops—and particularly as it moves toward more autonomous, agent-based AI—it may become far more difficult for people to detect manipulated content.
Source: es.euronews.com
Author: Euronews with AP
Picture from Freepik