With the proliferation of health information on the Internet, it is difficult to know whether content is truly reliable or whether it is fake news. In France, Inserm recently made available to adolescents an unprecedented educational kit, designed to help them better assess the health information they encounter in their daily lives.
A free digital tool to counter fake news
Nowadays, adolescents browse, whether intentionally or not, a great deal of content relating to their health. These materials concern, among other things, medications, vaccines, nutrition, dietary supplements, sleep, physical activity, and mental health. These contents circulate abundantly on social networks and video platforms. They are also found in search engines and in the answers produced by AI. Unfortunately, it is clear that these streams are heavily polluted by fake news. Indeed, any approximation, error, or deception in health matters can have consequences. Teens expose themselves to ineffective or dangerous practices, delays in medical care, and abandoning a valid treatment in favor of an unfounded one, etc.
For Inserm, it is urgent to help young people better cope with these information flows. As revealed in a press release on September 10, 2026, a tool named Fake News Santé is now available – download link HERE. It consists of digital files to download for free by the adolescents themselves—from 4e to Terminale—but also by school nurses, teachers and other education professionals. In practice, the kit comprises a complete animation support (PowerPoint file), a facilitator’s guide, and activities (exercise sheets). Furthermore, the extended workshop presents a collective fact-checking mission based on health information drawn from typical content circulating on social networks.
“The kit provides teachers and education professionals with a complete teaching aid and activities that allow students to compare their initial impressions with a verification process.”, reads the press release.
Equipping teens with tools to guard against misinformation
According to Inserm, the aim is not to draw up a fixed blacklist. Indeed, the goal is to target themes that are part of teenagers’ daily lives and major medical myths, in order to help them build a reliable scientific understanding. In other words, the workshop aims to familiarise young people with the scientific method. Thus, it is about becoming capable of formulating hypotheses, assessing the strength of evidence and understanding their weight, but also being able to distinguish between a single study and a body of converging results.
The Fake News Santé tool thus provides a comprehensive framework for adolescents, so that they probe more deeply into the information they receive. The objective will therefore be to determine what the source of the information is and in what field of expertise, while also observing on what evidence these infos rest and whether that same evidence is reliable or not. Finally, the workshop features a slogan to adopt before every health information: “We slow down, we verify, then we decide.”
Finally, it should be noted that Inserm has been mobilising for several years against health misinformation. Now, the aim is no longer to directly provide answers to false information that circulates. Indeed, the time has come for actively raising awareness among young people so that, in the long term, they become capable of shielding themselves against misinformation.
