Our children belong to the so-called "Digital Natives" generation, however, several studies show that, in general, the youth of today have poorly developed Internet search skills. This game aims to reveal some common mistakes that young people make when they search on the Internet, to make them visible and to encourage more thoughtful and rational habits when searching for information.

Below you will find some tips to get the most out of the game and some objectives you might want to keep in mind while doing the activity and, especially, during the final reflection:

• Show that the answer that you find quickly is not necessarily the best answer.
• Choosing the right keywords for your search is crucial.
• We must read the information carefully to see if it fits our search correctly.
• Not all the information we find on the Internet is true or mistake-free, checking the information is part of the process of searching for information.

For this activity you will only need:

• One device for each participant to do the searches on the Internet (these can be smartphones, tablets or laptops/computers)
• Paper and pen

The following section provides a series of questions with the answers so that other than some reading by the adult prior to the activity, no further preparation is necessary. If you like the activity or want to adapt it to your family's own areas of interest, you can change the list of questions, always keeping in mind that the most important thing about this activity is not the results but the reflections we will make after the game.

The race of questions

In this activity we will give a list of questions to the two or more people participating in the game. The premise is simple – participants, starting at the same time, look for the answers on the internet. The person who finishes first will receive 20 points, the second 18 points, the third 16 points and so on. Once all the participants have answered all the questions we check the answers. For this you can use the links provided after the list of questions. For each incorrect answer subtract 3 points. The winner is the person who has the most points at the end.

At the end of the activity, we will think about what difficulties we have encountered when looking for the questions on the Internet and if these were the same depending on the type of question asked .

List of questions for the race:

1. Who said "and yet it moves"?
2. What is the Chinese restaurant syndrome?
3. Is there such a thing as karma?
4. How should you use your cell phone to reduce your risk of cancer?
5. Do aliens exist?
6. Which of the following people does not have a chemical element named after them?

   Einstein, Bhor, Newton, Marie Curie o Fermi

7. How many people have lived on the earth throughout history.
8. In science it is important to do good research, but it is more important to ask good questions. An example is that of a person who was walking in the field and suddenly asked himself, Is it my imagination, or did I hear more birds around here in my childhood?

   This scientist began to investigate the answer and wrote what is considered the first treatise on ecology in history, Silent Spring.

   What was the name of the person who asked that question?

9. People have had to be confined to their homes during an epidemic many times. Isaac Newton, for example, took advantage of the confinement of the bubonic plague to do scientific experiments and discovered that white light is composed of all the colors of the rainbow.

   In what year did this famous bubonic plague epidemic occur?

10. Does cooking in the microwave destroy the walls of food cells?

Here you have some links where you can find the answers to the questions.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_yet_it_moves
2. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51139005
3. The existence of Karma is not a statement with a right or wrong answer, it depends on each person's belief system.
4. It is very unlikely that cell phones cause cancer. https://www.livescience.com/7543-truth-cell-phones-cancer.html
5. https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/about/
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boron Bhor
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermium Fermi
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsteinium Einstein
7. https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
9. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/03/12/during-pandemic-isaac-newton-had-work-home-too-he-used-time-wisely/
10. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-any-evidence-tha/

Our teenagers have grown up with answers to questions readily available on the internet. The fact that doubts arise about what is correct or incorrect information is a good thing, as it can teach them to be more critical and demanding of what they read.

Take advantage of these doubts to stimulate critical thinking, applauding their questions and their scepticism and encouraging them to carry on with their reasoning. If any of the questions in the game do not satisfy you and the teenagers do not accept the proposed answers, encourage them to argue against it and tell them how complicated reality can be sometimes.

• Why should I believe the answers given in this activity?

You shouldn’t. You can go deeper into the search to try to find out whether the information we give is correct or not. It is a very interesting exercise from which you can learn a lot. If you detect any mistakes in our answers, we will be very grateful if you would let us know.

First, pay attention to the questions some people got correct and others didn’t. Think back and try to remember how the search was made. Compare the search of those who found a right answer with those that were wrong:

• Did you use the same keywords in the search?
• Which of the suggested entries did you choose as your source of information?
• Did you read carefully what was written in the text?

Secondly, ask the participants to say if they almost made a mistake in any of the answers, but realised the mistake before writing the answer down.

• What mistake were they about to make?
• How did they realize it and how did they correct it?

Finally, choose a question where all participants made a mistake. If there is none, choose a question where someone gave a wrong answer.

• How should you have searched to minimize the probability of error?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090128092341.htm

https://www.webwise.ie/teachers/advice-teachers/digital-literacy-skills-finding-information/