For Educators
Curriculum resources, research, and the organisations doing the most useful work. The evidence on what works in classrooms is clearer than you might expect.
How to read this page. Tap any underlined word to see the precise term and a short definition. Expand any "Deeper" box for the evidence and contested points. The main text works on its own — you can skip both and still get the whole argument.
The inoculation approach — what the evidence shows
Cambridge University researchers (Roozenbeek, van der Linden et al., 2022, Science Advances) have shown across multiple peer-reviewed studies that exposing people to weakened doses of manipulation techniques — rather than specific false claims — produces resistance to future manipulation that lasted at least three months with regular testing, and faded within two months without it. The effect is consistent across political affiliations, age groups, and education levels.
The practical implication: media literacy education that focuses on how manipulation works (prebunking) reaches further than education built around specific false claims (debunking). You cannot debunk every false claim. You can inoculate against the small number of techniques that produce them.
Prebunking vs debunking
Debunking corrects a false claim after it has spread; prebunking teaches the manipulation technique in advance, so students recognise the move whatever specific claim it carries. The advantage is coverage and durability: there are endless false claims to debunk, but a small number of recurring techniques to inoculate against, and technique-level learning transfers across topics.
Sources
- Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S. et al. (2022), Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media, Science Advances 8(34).
- Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Basol, M. & van der Linden, S. (2021), Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 27(1) — stable for at least three months with regular testing; faded within two months without.
Use this in a lesson
The Attention Machine — an introduction — download the slides (.pptx) — 30 slides, about 35 minutes, with full speaker notes on every slide: what to say, how long to spend, what to do if someone asks the hard question. Written for a general adult audience and for students from about 15 up. Every figure on it is sourced and matches a page of this site. Free to use, adapt and present, non-commercially and with a credit to attentionmachine.org — the site's own CC BY-NC-SA licence. It carries no logo, only the site's address on the title, demo and closing slides.
Tools and resources
Bad News game — getbadnews.com — about 15 minutes, browser-based, free. Teaches six manipulation techniques from the inside. Developed by DROG and Cambridge University. Peer-reviewed evidence for the inoculation effect. Written for ages 14 and up, its makers say, with an info sheet for using it in class; a Junior version covers ages 8–11. Start here.
Breaking Harmony Square — harmonysquare.game — Cambridge prebunking game focused specifically on political manipulation. Companion to the Bad News game, different content.
Inoculation Science — inoculation.science — the Cambridge and Bristol hub for the prebunking games and short videos, with a practical guide to running prebunking written with Jigsaw and BBC Media Action. It is a toolkit rather than a curriculum: teachers build lessons around the games and videos.
Adolescence (Netflix, 2025) — dramatised account of a teenage boy's radicalisation into the manosphere, a worldview that attributes male difficulties primarily to women and feminism. Not a documentary, but accurate about the mechanics it portrays. In March 2025 Netflix made it free to UK secondary schools through Into Film+, with discussion guides from the charity Tender. Best watched with students and discussed, not shown without facilitation.
Official organisations, by country
National and EU bodies whose job is educational advice on media literacy and online safety — the chips mark the country each serves. As the site gains language editions, each will lead with its own country's organisations.
- Better Internet for Kids EU — The European Commission’s portal — includes the directory of national Safer Internet Centres with helplines per EU country.
- AFP Factuel FR — The French-language fact-checking service of Agence France-Presse; AFP’s fact-checking operation, AFP Fact Check, is an IFCN verified signatory (global), and AFP is a verified member of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (French).
- CLEMI FR — The body in charge of media and information literacy across the French school system since 1983, with classroom resources, teacher training and guides for families (French).
- Internet Sans Crainte FR — France’s national programme for helping young people use the internet well: hundreds of free resources for 3–18-year-olds, their parents and teachers. Part of the French Safer Internet Centre, run by Tralalere (French).
- Les Surligneurs FR — An independent French outlet that checks political claims, with a focus on what the law actually says; an IFCN verified signatory and a verified member of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (French).
- Mediacritica (CJI) MD — Media-literacy platform of Moldova’s Independent Journalism Center, which also built the optional Media Education subject taught in Moldovan schools since 2017 (Romanian).
- Stopfals.md MD — Moldova’s fact-checking portal, run by the Independent Press Association (API); an IFCN verified signatory, in Romanian and Russian.
- Isdatechtzo.nl (Netwerk Mediawijsheid) NL — Learn how fake news works and how to check whether a message is reliable, with toolkits to download and use — from Netwerk Mediawijsheid, developed with Beeld en Geluid and ECP (Dutch).
- Netwerk Mediawijsheid NL — The Dutch national media-literacy network, set up by the Ministry of Education in 2008, with over 1,000 partner organisations: knowledge and tools for professionals, the Week van de Mediawijsheid and the annual Mediawijsheid Kennisdag (Dutch).
- Veiliginternetten.nl NL — Government-backed practical advice on online safety and privacy (Dutch).
- Factual.ro RO — Romania’s first political fact-checking site, run by the NGO Funky Citizens; a verified member of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (Romanian).
- Internet Matters UK — Practical online-safety guidance per age group and per platform.
- Common Sense Education US — Free digital-citizenship curriculum; independent nonprofit.
What the research says about phone policies
The evidence on school phone bans is encouraging but not settled. A Norwegian study of middle schools (Abrahamsson, 2026, Journal of Human Resources) found that bans reduced bullying, improved girls' grades and cut girls' visits to mental-health specialists, with the largest gains for girls from poorer families. An English study of 91 schools (Beland and Murphy, 2016) found higher test scores after bans, concentrated among lower-achieving pupils. But the largest English study to survey pupils directly — 30 schools and 1,227 pupils (Goodyear and colleagues, 2025, The Lancet Regional Health – Europe) — found no difference in wellbeing, sleep or overall phone use between pupils at restrictive and permissive schools: bans cut use during the school day, not across the day. The fair reading is that bans help with focus and in-school use, and probably with bullying, but are not on their own a mental-health fix. Resistance comes from both sides: New Zealand's national review of its 2024 ban found that only 37% of the oldest secondary pupils followed the rules, that pupils were less likely to comply where parents resisted, and that compliance was higher where pupils understood what the rules were for.
Deeper — how strong is the classroom evidence, and what are its limits
The inoculation approach is unusually well-evidenced for an education intervention: multiple randomised studies, including large field tests of short prebunking videos on YouTube (Roozenbeek, van der Linden and colleagues, 2022, Science Advances), show people become measurably better at spotting manipulation techniques, and the effect holds across political affiliations. That breadth — working regardless of where a student sits politically — is part of why it suits a classroom.
The honest limits. Two caveats matter for planning. First, effects decay: in the study, a single session's effect faded within two months unless it was refreshed by repeated testing, so prebunking works best as repeated practice, not a one-off assembly. Second, most measurement is of technique-recognition in test conditions; durable change in real-world sharing and belief is harder to demonstrate and still being studied. None of this undercuts the approach — it is the best-supported option available — but it argues for treating it as an ongoing skill, regularly refreshed, rather than a vaccine given once.
Sources
- Roozenbeek, J., van der Linden, S. et al. (2022), Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media, Science Advances 8(34).
- Abrahamsson, S. (2026), Smartphone Bans, Student Outcomes and Mental Health, Journal of Human Resources (online ahead of print, March 2026; first circulated as NHH Discussion Paper 01/2024) — Norwegian middle schools.
- Beland, L.-P. & Murphy, R. (2016), Ill Communication: Technology, distraction & student performance, Labour Economics 41 — 91 English schools.
- Goodyear, V.A. et al. (2025), School phone policies and their association with mental wellbeing, phone use, and social media use (SMART Schools), The Lancet Regional Health – Europe — 30 English schools, 1,227 pupils.
- Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Basol, M. & van der Linden, S. (2021), Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 27(1) — how long the effect holds: stable for at least three months with regular testing; faded within two months without.
- Roozenbeek, J. & van der Linden, S. (2019), Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation, Palgrave Communications 5(65) — the Bad News evaluation, 15,000 players; about 15 minutes of play; the six techniques the game teaches; developed with DROG.
- Bad News — the inoculation game, free in the browser, from the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab and DROG; its info sheet for educators: "The game was written to be suitable for people age 14 and up".
- EDMO BELUX (24 February 2023), Bad News Junior — the junior edition, "fully adapted for children between 8 and 11 years old".
- Education Review Office (2025), Do not disturb: A review of removing cell phones from New Zealand's classrooms — Summary — 37% of Year 12–13 students follow the rules; "when parents resist phone rules, students are more likely to break them"; compliance 1.6 times as likely to be high "when students understand the purpose of the rules".
- Netflix (31 March 2025), "Netflix Makes 'Adolescence' Available to All Secondary Schools Across the UK" — through Into Film+, free for state secondary schools in England and, with Netflix's funding, in the other UK nations; guides and resources from the healthy relationships charity Tender.