This whole thing started because Sedro-Woolley high school teacher Linsey
Kitchens saw the people in her life struggle with the Internet. Specifically, she saw
them struggle with what to believe and how to engage their critical thinking skills.

Whether that was a teenager in her classroom, convinced that if they bought a
protein powder from their favorite influencer, it would make them stronger and
more popular. Or the senior citizens in her life, who went down rabbit holes of
conspiracy theories online. Or fell for online scams.

So Kitchens became obsessed with teaching media literacy to people of all ages.
She even won a fellowship at the University of Washington’s Center for an
Informed Public where she studied how teachers can incorporate media literacy
into their classrooms.

This past spring, she created a day-long event where teens and seniors could spend
the day together, at what you might call a “giant skills swap.” The teenagers gave
presentations about how AI scrapes information from reliable and unreliable
sources.While the seniors gave presentations about animal rescue and how to fix a
flat tire.

But the event almost didn’t happen, because one of those groups was scared to
engage with the other group.

SoundSide’s Kyle Norris was at the event, called “Ageless Intelligence,” and has
this story.

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