Did you know that there are tiny little hippos crawling around and living in your house and they only come out at night? These hippos are found throughout Canada and the Eastern United States. They feed on your crumbs from leftover food and other scraps around your house. Were you aware of this? Do you believe in the house hippos?
Many children in Canada believed that they were real. House Hippos was a PSA made in 1999 that was targeted toward children and intended to teach media literacy and critical thinking. It helped them answer the question why do we believe everything we see on social media?
Surely you’ve been told this many times–be careful with what you believe on the internet. And you may be thinking, “Oh, my gosh! I know already!” or “Why this again?”
And, yes it’s very much a headache to hear this so much. However, with technology and AI improving, it’s very important that we are more aware of this again. AI has improved and can create much more realistic visuals that can fool a lot of people, resulting in dangerous misinformation.. AI can be found online in videos, photos, or voice recordings.
Nowadays people are so attached to their phones and technology scrolling media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and more. New advancement tools like AI can be unsafe and dangerous to viewers.
There have been incidents of individuals believing or falling for false information. When seeing something that could potentially be false information or not seem like a reliable source, it causes more chaos and distrust.
According to today.com, in August 2025, there was a video posted on TikTok that went viral showing bunnies jumping on a trampoline. Millions of people saw this and shared it, finding the clip cute and adorable. As this clip blew up, the video was determined to have been AI generated, but many people had already been fooled by the realistic and cute nature of the video.
While this particular instance may not have been dangerous, it still creates a sense of distrust for anything we see on the internet. People have the feeling that they never know what to actually believe.
But it’s not only AI creating these illusions that fool people. Things like scams, bots, and fake news are examples of misleading information or social interaction on social media.
According to Pew Research Center, 73% of U.S adults have fallen for scams online. The most common scams that tricked adults were credit card, online shopping, and cryptoware with an individual’s work or personal information. Of the people surveyed, 24% reported they received a scam email, text message or call; 32% of surveys had reported that they were a victim of this within the last year.
Another thing to be wary of is fake news or misinformation. Fake news is meant to mislead with false or manipulated information. It can often be political in nature and is designed to provoke emotion. Being aware of what we consume and how we consume content is important.
News Literacy Project provides a seven step framework to keep you sharp as you scroll online:
1. Pause.
2. Memes aren’t news.
3. Likes and shares don’t equal credibility.
4. Take time to assess sources.
5. Get to the experts.
6. Don’t feed the trolls.
7. Steer clear of conspiratorial thinking.
Information that is fake can easily spread and create chaos in the real world. Remember to think before believing what you see and to fact check if that information could be true–whether is is fake news or manipulated content from AI.
