This website isn’t optimized for small screen sizes — please try viewing on a computer.
This website isn’t optimized for small screen sizes — please try viewing on a computer.
You might’ve seen an app called Gas recently — maybe you’ve been using it and enjoying it!
In any case, it’s very popular. 1 in 3 U.S. teens have installed the app!
You might’ve also heard that the app is involved in human trafficking.
And you wouldn’t be alone — tens of thousands of users have deleted the app over worries about human trafficking.
When you see news like this, which reaction is better?
Not quite — we don’t want to share untrue rumors, and we don’t know if this is true yet.
That’s usually the smarter choice. We want to ask ourselves:
How much of that is true? And how can we investigate these sorts of rumors when we hear them?
Let’s do a Google search for “Gas app trafficking”.
Which of these results looks more trustworthy? Click on your choice.
That’s right! Why did you think it was more trustworthy?
Not quite. Anyone can post a video on TikTok and there’s no fact-checking, so entertaining as it is, it’s not a credible source.
Nice! Some reasons for this source’s trustworthyness:
If we read the article, we’ll read:
The Oktaha Public School system in Oklahoma posted an announcement on its Facebook page on Thursday claiming the Gas app tricks students into giving away their locations. “Children are being kidnapped in other towns and this new app is thought to be the source of predators finding their location,” the Facebook post read. After [Gas founder] Bier reached out, explaining his app, the post was removed. “We’ve confirmed that this was a hoax and we removed it,” said Jerry Needham, superintendent for the Oktaha school district.
Human trafficking survivor and advocate Eliza Bleu attempted to swat down the conspiracy theories on Twitter. On Oct. 20, ... Ashton Kutcher, who ... co-founded Thorn, a nonprofit that builds digital tools to defend children from sexual abuse and fight child sex trafficking, posted “Gas app is not involved in trafficking humans.”
We shouldn’t just trust one source when confirming whether something’s true or not.
This article also comes up in search results:
It looks to be from a local news channel, which is fairly credible. However, let’s read the article critically.
The article centers around the concern that older students could use it to message younger students with inappropriate messages:
“If people would get on there and say nice and kind things that would be wonderful, but we all know that is not how our world works,” Davidson said.
However, we know from the previous article (and can confirm with our own research or hands-on experience with the app) that Gas doesn’t allow sending other users messages. The only form of interaction is through filling out pre-written polls, written by the app’s team.
Even though sources may seem credible, we also need to evaluate their contents in order to fully judge their credibility.
Now it’s your turn! Search for another source we could use, and write a few sentences about why it’s credible:
Now that we feel more informed, we can ask ourselves:
Do we still want to share this information?
If yes, that’s great! But if not, we just saved ourselves from sharing a piece of untrustworthy information.
It might feel like it’s good to share information “just in case,” like the Snapchat we saw earlier.
But actually, even sharing these rumors “just in case” can be harmful. Sharing a rumor can make it seem more credible, and allows the rumor to take advantage of you in order to spread further.
Plus, you don’t want to undermine your own credibility by sharing something that turns out to be untrue. If you research information before you share it, people will come to know that you’re a trustworthy source of information.
This is an example of the process that you should go through every time you come across a piece of information on the internet.
The internet makes it easy for untrue rumors to spread, and they can be annoying or even dangerous.
By researching rumors like the Gas human trafficking rumor, you can avoid damaging your own credibility and help stop the spread of misinformation. It’s what smart people, like you, do!