True or false?

Separating “what’s real from what’s not real” is a concept children learn during the early years.

But as the lines blur between editorial, marketing, advertising and user-generated content online, older children are struggling to determine “what’s real from what’s not real.”

As an early childhood educator, I’ve helped countless children distinguish between fake food in the playhouse and the real food they ate for breakfast. But now that we’re living in what some might call the “golden age for misinformation,” we need to make sure older children can also distinguish truth from fiction.