This is so important. And useful. In fact, one of the most imortant and useful pieces I've read on Substack, or the internet for that matter. This is what "Do your own research" REALLY means. I would add a maxim for the outset of such research: Don't let yourself be misled by what you are HOPING to find. Go into research willing to accept legitimate findings that contradict your opinions or suspicions. If you can't manage that, you're not doing your own research!
Minor point: full-text academic articles can often not be accessed for free on the internet. But usually (in my experience) an abstract is which summarizes the papers main findings. It might be enough to answer important questions or show that further poking is needed (and worthwhile).
Finally, a pdf of this post, that people could easily save or print out, would be very welcome.
Thank you so much for this high praise and the thoughtful additions! Your point about going into research willing to accept findings that contradict your opinions is absolutely essential and something I should have emphasized more. Confirmation bias is one of the hardest things to guard against in our own work, and acknowledging that upfront makes all the difference between actual research and seeking validation.
You're right about academic articles and abstracts. Even when the full text is behind a paywall, the abstract often gives you enough to evaluate whether the research supports a claim or contradicts it. Sometimes that's all you need to verify or debunk something you're investigating, and if you need more detail, you know the paper is worth tracking down through your library or interlibrary loan.
I love the idea of making this available as a PDF; that makes a lot of sense for something designed to be a practical toolkit. I'm working on turning key articles like this one into visual references and checklists that will live in a framework library - coming soon!
Thank you again for this - what you said really means a lot to me. 🙏
Jeez, seems like our kids will have it that much harder to learn, grow, and become the erudite adults we're trying to cultivate.
My 6th grader was researching on a topic the other day when I saw her grabbing just the AI summary Google conveniently places at the top. I inserted myself and asked if she planned to check out the cited sources (i.e. go beyond the summary and read for herself what was purportedly said). She replied no and that "all the kids do this!". Make no mistake: this is a straight-A kid who wasn't getting AI summaries a grade or two ago.
The drive to check sources isn't something innate in everyone, and when there's pressure to produce (reports, posters, analyses), the urge to cave and grab the top result is strong.
The school system hasn't caught up and the tech is being pushed before we know how to properly instill it in the system. Parents are left up to their own devices as the first wave of social media-toting teens' parents were.
When AI summaries become the norm for straight-A students, we're watching a generation learn to optimize for output instead of understanding. The research process used to build critical thinking skills almost by accident because finding and evaluating sources was unavoidable. Now those steps are optional, which means the thinking they develop is optional too. What makes this tricky is that your daughter isn't wrong about efficiency: AI summaries CAN be useful starting points. The problem is when starting points become endpoints because there's no incentive to go deeper and no one modeling why deeper matters.
The social media comparison is right, but the stakes are different. Social media changed how kids communicate and socialize. AI is changing how they think and learn, which affects everything built on top of those foundational skills. You're creating friction in a process designed to feel frictionless by questioning her shortcuts, and that matters even when you can't solve the institutional gap alone.
I modeled "going deeper on sources" when I wrote three articles zipping over centuries of French Canadian history; I even involved her in the research through books I'd read years prior and she took pride in this. Still, as you point out, she's learning to optimize for output. Realistically, adults do this too mostly due to workplace pressures. Kids do this because they're not yet blessed with lived experience and hindsight. How should we expect anything else? They can't yet conceive of the value of deeper research.
I think it'll take considerable changes to *what* schoolwork is assigned, *how* and *where* it's done, and the assessment methods to create the conditions needed for deeper research, analysis, synthesis, and the ability to communicate what they've learned with the confidence of someone who understood.
This is great, thank you! Though I would maybe caveat the FamilySearch website in that researchers should only use the records and catalog and *not* the familytree which is crowdsourced and incredibly inaccurate.
Thank you for this clarification! You're absolutely right about the distinction. The FamilySearch records and catalog are solid resources for primary source documents, but the crowdsourced family tree is a different beast entirely and shouldn't be treated as verified information. I'm updating the article now to include that caveat so readers know to use the records and catalog rather than the family tree.
You mention the Internet Archive in the context of the Wayback Machine. I'll add that the wider Archive itself is enormously useful, especially for verifying older information (audio recordings, full text of books and magazines etc.) which isn't available elsewhere. I consult the text archives alone several times a week -- some full texts aren't searchable, others are so only if you contribute $$$ to the Archive's support (which I do), but there are often more than one copy of a given work... and sometimes trying a different copy gets you where want to go.
Hope this makes it way into school curriculums.
This information is invaluable and presented in a brilliant easy to understand manner. Kudos! You are on my list of must reads.
I forgot to write All praise to librarians, the main preservers of knowledge throughout history.
This is so important. And useful. In fact, one of the most imortant and useful pieces I've read on Substack, or the internet for that matter. This is what "Do your own research" REALLY means. I would add a maxim for the outset of such research: Don't let yourself be misled by what you are HOPING to find. Go into research willing to accept legitimate findings that contradict your opinions or suspicions. If you can't manage that, you're not doing your own research!
Minor point: full-text academic articles can often not be accessed for free on the internet. But usually (in my experience) an abstract is which summarizes the papers main findings. It might be enough to answer important questions or show that further poking is needed (and worthwhile).
Finally, a pdf of this post, that people could easily save or print out, would be very welcome.
Thanks again!
Thank you so much for this high praise and the thoughtful additions! Your point about going into research willing to accept findings that contradict your opinions is absolutely essential and something I should have emphasized more. Confirmation bias is one of the hardest things to guard against in our own work, and acknowledging that upfront makes all the difference between actual research and seeking validation.
You're right about academic articles and abstracts. Even when the full text is behind a paywall, the abstract often gives you enough to evaluate whether the research supports a claim or contradicts it. Sometimes that's all you need to verify or debunk something you're investigating, and if you need more detail, you know the paper is worth tracking down through your library or interlibrary loan.
I love the idea of making this available as a PDF; that makes a lot of sense for something designed to be a practical toolkit. I'm working on turning key articles like this one into visual references and checklists that will live in a framework library - coming soon!
Thank you again for this - what you said really means a lot to me. 🙏
OMG I'm writing this comment before I even read the dang article! Thank you, Hana!
As usual, EXCELLENT article. I'm hoping my kids' schools will make fact-checking part of their curriculum. Your toolkit would be a GREAT start!
That would be amazing to start with working with schools!
Jeez, seems like our kids will have it that much harder to learn, grow, and become the erudite adults we're trying to cultivate.
My 6th grader was researching on a topic the other day when I saw her grabbing just the AI summary Google conveniently places at the top. I inserted myself and asked if she planned to check out the cited sources (i.e. go beyond the summary and read for herself what was purportedly said). She replied no and that "all the kids do this!". Make no mistake: this is a straight-A kid who wasn't getting AI summaries a grade or two ago.
The drive to check sources isn't something innate in everyone, and when there's pressure to produce (reports, posters, analyses), the urge to cave and grab the top result is strong.
The school system hasn't caught up and the tech is being pushed before we know how to properly instill it in the system. Parents are left up to their own devices as the first wave of social media-toting teens' parents were.
When AI summaries become the norm for straight-A students, we're watching a generation learn to optimize for output instead of understanding. The research process used to build critical thinking skills almost by accident because finding and evaluating sources was unavoidable. Now those steps are optional, which means the thinking they develop is optional too. What makes this tricky is that your daughter isn't wrong about efficiency: AI summaries CAN be useful starting points. The problem is when starting points become endpoints because there's no incentive to go deeper and no one modeling why deeper matters.
The social media comparison is right, but the stakes are different. Social media changed how kids communicate and socialize. AI is changing how they think and learn, which affects everything built on top of those foundational skills. You're creating friction in a process designed to feel frictionless by questioning her shortcuts, and that matters even when you can't solve the institutional gap alone.
Well put, thank you!
I modeled "going deeper on sources" when I wrote three articles zipping over centuries of French Canadian history; I even involved her in the research through books I'd read years prior and she took pride in this. Still, as you point out, she's learning to optimize for output. Realistically, adults do this too mostly due to workplace pressures. Kids do this because they're not yet blessed with lived experience and hindsight. How should we expect anything else? They can't yet conceive of the value of deeper research.
I think it'll take considerable changes to *what* schoolwork is assigned, *how* and *where* it's done, and the assessment methods to create the conditions needed for deeper research, analysis, synthesis, and the ability to communicate what they've learned with the confidence of someone who understood.
This is great, thank you! Though I would maybe caveat the FamilySearch website in that researchers should only use the records and catalog and *not* the familytree which is crowdsourced and incredibly inaccurate.
Thank you for this clarification! You're absolutely right about the distinction. The FamilySearch records and catalog are solid resources for primary source documents, but the crowdsourced family tree is a different beast entirely and shouldn't be treated as verified information. I'm updating the article now to include that caveat so readers know to use the records and catalog rather than the family tree.
Thank you incredibly useful.
THIS IS FANTASTIC thank you!
EXCELLENT!!
*Extremely* helpful, as always -- thank you!
You mention the Internet Archive in the context of the Wayback Machine. I'll add that the wider Archive itself is enormously useful, especially for verifying older information (audio recordings, full text of books and magazines etc.) which isn't available elsewhere. I consult the text archives alone several times a week -- some full texts aren't searchable, others are so only if you contribute $$$ to the Archive's support (which I do), but there are often more than one copy of a given work... and sometimes trying a different copy gets you where want to go.
Thanks again, Hana!
And the Archive also provides access to thousands of out of print books that can be read online or even downloaded.
Yes - an incredible resource!