Google is holding a contest challenging youths to spot fake news

The Google News Initiative is organising a program called the Youth Verification Challenge, a fact checking campaign that wants youths aged between 15 to 24 to think critically and develop basic verification skills. The Youth Verification Challenge also wants to help these teens and young adults to forge teamworking abilities and resolve tough challenges together. It certainly makes sense in this day and age when fake news and scams are running rampant online.

It will run from April to September of this year, covering the Asian-Pacific region and consists of eight languages, namely English, Bahasa Indonesia, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai. There will be four stages of challenges dubbed as ‘chapters’ which will get harder as you progress in the challenge. Professional fact-checkers will be on hand too to help out and share their thoughts with participants.

The first chapter is now open for registration, and is titled ‘Level Up’. There will be eight live quizzes happening every Monday to Thursday, 8.30 local time between the 18th of April to the 28th of April. You’ll first need to watch a quick tutorial on fact-checking tools and how to use them before taking on the quiz. Google News Initiative also gives you some tips on how to approach it, telling you to use two devices, one for the tutorial stream and another for the quiz itself, They also encourage you to sign up with your friends, as you’ll need to go chapter 3 onwards in teams.

If you complete at least three chapters, you’ll earn yourself a certificate of participation. You’ll also be able to earn yourself some cool stuff from Google too if you complete at least six of eight quizzes in chapter 1. Alternatively, if you’re a parent you might also find this useful for your child to help them become more digitally literate and be able to spot fake news better.

To register, you simply need to click here to visit the Youth Verification Challenge, with registrations open now till the 16 of April. As for chapter 2, registrations for that will open on 25 April to 13 May, with the stage happening 17 May onwards. Chapter 3 meanwhile opens for registration 1 Sept, with the challenge on the 14 of Sept. The final ‘Battle of the Finest’ will happen on the 21st of Sept. For more details, you can check out the Youth Verification Challenge website.