Teachers around the country keep telling me the same thing: the internet is no longer staying online, it is walking through the school gates and into the classroom. Sometimes it bursts through. Like Andrew Tate, 6/7, online bullying and the recent red/blue schools “wars” experienced in some areas. Sometimes it has crept in slowly like the language of the manosphere, dietary fads, warped narratives about crime, gender and politics and strange conspiracy theories. That should not surprise us. In just a few decades, the way young people encounter information has been transformed. Previous generations made sense of the world through a handful of TV channels, newspapers and information from trusted institutions. Today’s children are growing up in a 24/7 information environment shaped by unedited social media feeds, online influencers and algorithmic recommendation systems. This is not a world of orderly debate. It is often a world of noise, distortion and manipulation. It resembles anarchy rather than structured conversation and discussion. Resources to help Through UCL’s Institute of Education work, funded by the Pears Foundation, I have been developing professional development and initial teaching training resources to help teachers respond to conspiracy beliefs, misinformation and disinformation. I hear similar concerns cropping up again and again In sessions with trainee teachers and experienced staff across the country. Ultimately the online world is not just influencing what children think. It is shaping how they think. The latest report from the Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools brings hard evidence to what teachers already know. Since its 2025 launch report, parental reports of their child raising a conspiracy belief have risen by a third. At the same time, 71 per cent of young people, 78 per cent of parents and 85 per cent of school staff say it is becoming harder to tell what is real and what is fake online. That should be a warning to policymakers and a call to action. Indeed the government has recently announced a social media ban for under-16s. But this alone is not enough. We need to support schools and teachers – and this starts with the curriculum. The “knowledge rich” 2014 curriculum promised to introduce young people “to the best that has been thought and said”. Whilst this is important, it is arguably looking backwards to the analogue world of yesteryear and failing to prepare young people for the digital world they actually inhabit. A world in which they spend hours navigating viral clips, anonymous accounts, influencers, memes, AI-generated content and opaque recommendation systems designed to maximise attention, not truth. Pupils may have about 5,000 lessons over the course of their secondary education. Only a tiny number of those help them to understand the online world that now shapes so much of their lives. That is why the government is right to embed media literacy across the curriculum, following the curriculum and assessment review. Vulnerable to exploitation The public has been ahead of policy on this. The commission’s latest report shows that 92 per cent of parents and 86 per cent of pupils support the introduction of media literacy in schools. But this media literacy cannot be confined to a few lessons in PSCHE. Young people need to understand how the internet works. How algorithms push content. How data is harvested. How online incentives reward outrage and falsehood. Why misinformation spreads so effectively. How to gauge the reliability of sources. How false narratives often tap into our emotions and to understand the potential threats to society and democracy. If we do not teach pupils how this system operates, we leave them to navigate it alone, leaving them vulnerable to commercial, emotional and intellectual exploitation. The information revolution has transformed childhood. Our curriculum has not kept up. If we want to prepare young people for the world as it is, not the world as it used to be, we need to stop teaching solely for an analogue age and recognise how the digital world is changing humanity.