Be Smart on the Internet

Picture this: You’re browsing (浏览) the internet and you come across a website. It has interesting articles. While some are news stories, others only look like news stories. They are advertisements, getting you to buy something. How do you tell the difference between a news story and an ad?

Back when I was growing up, this was easier. We got most of our information from newspapers. Important news stories appeared on the front page. Ads were boxed off and clearly labeled (标注). On the internet, however, the two are often presented together. It can be hard to tell which is which.

In a recent study by my research group, we showed a group of kids the home page of a popular online magazine. We asked them to tell us which of the links were news stories and which were ads. Most were great at spotting certain types of ads.“It has a

coupon code (优惠券码), a big company logo and words  “limited time offer，” one student told me. So where did the kids fail?

Some ads looked very much like news stories. They had headlines and presented information. But they may also include the phrase,“sponsored content." This means that someone has paid for the stories to be listed. It 's a way of saying that these stories were ads, but most kids didn't know this.

As a reader, you have the right to know who is behind the information you read. So look for the phrase,“sponsored content." (And look carefully一sometimes, it's written in small letters.) The internet is a vast (辽阔的) sea of information; we must learn to avoid the“whirlpools (旋涡).’