Choosing what deserves your attention
Learning intention By the end of this lesson, students can use three questions to decide whether online content deserves trust, needs checking or can be left behind.
- Time
- 42 minutes
- How the room works
- Groups of four or five
- You need
- Fictional online items on slips or a screen; paper and pens
- Opens with
- Where the scroll left you
Before you start
Keep all items fictional and do not ask students to show feeds, searches or messages. If harmful content, exploitation or targeted abuse is disclosed, respond privately and follow the setting's digital safeguarding procedures.
Read the full safeguarding note Adapting it for your class A note home for this lesson
Open this drawing in the library
Why this matters
Online content arrives quickly and often asks for an immediate reaction. Discernment gives us a pause in which to consider who made something, what it is asking from us and whether the information is reliable. We are aiming for thoughtful engagement, and we do not need to suspect everything we see.
Skill in context Discerning what in the digital world supports your values and wellbeing so that you can engage more consciously.
On the skill of digital agencyTry the interactive practiceTry it yourself first
“What You Chose Yourself” takes a few quiet minutes, just for you, before you teach it. Nothing you write in it is saved or sent.
Open with “Where the scroll left you”
5 minUse Where the scroll left you as a private recollection. Students can think about any recent online experience and do not need to name the platform or content.
Think back to a recent time online without opening a device or revisiting what you saw.
Find one private word for how the experience left you, such as connected, interested, tired, flat, unsettled or fine.
Let that word be information rather than a verdict on what you should do next.
Bring your attention back to the room and keep any details to yourself.
Listen for Do not predict a shared mood or treat a particular word as evidence of healthy or unhealthy use. Some students may choose not to recall an online experience.
Teacher explanation
10 minDigital discernment is the ability to decide what deserves our trust and attention. It is useful because online content can mix information, entertainment, persuasion and advertising in the same space.
Three questions can create a pause: Who made this and what do they want? What effect is it having on me? What evidence would help me decide whether it is accurate? Feelings are useful information about impact, but they do not prove whether a claim is true.
Questions for the room
- What techniques make a post, video or headline feel urgent?
- How can useful content and persuasive content look similar?
- Why might discernment be harder when someone is tired, lonely, angry or frightened?
Use the filter
18 min- Introduce three possible responses: trust for now, pause and check, or let go.
- Display the three questions about source and motive, personal impact, and supporting evidence. Model them with one fictional attention-grabbing headline.
- Give each group six made-up items, such as an unsourced breaking claim, a quiz collecting data, an advert presented as advice, a viral dare, a chain message asking to be forwarded and a clear guide from a checkable source.
- Ask groups to sort each item and record what evidence shaped the decision. Several placements may be reasonable if the explanation is sound.
- Each group chooses its hardest item and names what more it would need to know.
- Gather patterns and emphasise that discernment includes updating a decision when better information appears.
Private reflection
6 minWhich of the three questions would be most useful to keep nearby the next time something online feels urgent, persuasive or difficult to place?
How they reflect Private journal
Closing
3 minYou do not need to trust everything or reject everything. You can pause and give your attention where the evidence and your values meet.
Safeguarding
Keep all items fictional and do not ask students to show feeds, searches or messages. If harmful content, exploitation or targeted abuse is disclosed, respond privately and follow the setting's digital safeguarding procedures.
If something a young person says gives you concern, follow your setting’s usual safeguarding route. This is not yours to carry alone.
Adapting it
In other settings
Take this lesson with you
The plan is editable, so you can change the names, the examples and the timings to fit the young people in front of you.
To teach
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