How can I check a viral video before I share it?

Pause first, then check where the video came from. That one habit catches a lot. You don’t need special training. You need a few minutes and a willingness to wait before you share.

Start with a fair point: people who share a false video are usually not foolish. Gordon Pennycook and his colleagues found that most people in their studies said it matters to share only accurate news. Yet in their tests, whether a headline was true had little effect on whether people wanted to share it. The problem was attention. People’s minds were on other things, not on whether the post was true. When the researchers subtly turned people’s attention to accuracy, the quality of what they shared went up.

Speed works against us too. A large study of Twitter found that false news was 70% more likely to be retweeted than true news. The authors suggest one reason: false stories tend to feel new and surprising.

And now some videos are made by AI. In one study of 1,276 people, the average ability to tell real media from AI-made media was close to a coin toss. Knowing more about AI did not help much. So the old advice, “look closely for glitches,” is not enough.

The good news is that checking where a video came from still works, whether it is AI-made or real footage with a false caption. Ask who first posted it, when and where it was filmed, and what trusted outlets say. Put a screenshot into a reverse image search to find older copies. Look for content labels, but don’t treat a missing label as proof of anything. If you still can’t confirm the video, you can wait. Waiting is free.