During a storm last spring, a photo exploded across social media. It showed a large shark swimming beside cars on a flooded motorway. Within hours it had been shared more than 80,000 times, often with captions such as "Stay indoors — sharks in the streets!"
Fourteen-year-old Amira Haddad saw the photo in her family group chat. Something felt wrong. "The shark looked too sharp compared with the blurry water," she said. "So I decided to check."
First, Amira ran a reverse image search. She found the same shark in a wildlife photo published years earlier, on a website about ocean animals. Next, she checked two local news sites. Neither mentioned sharks; both reported flooding and road closures. Finally, she found an article from a fact-checking organisation explaining that the image had been edited and had appeared during several different storms in different countries.
Amira posted the fact-check in the group chat. "My uncle had already shared the photo," she laughed. "He was embarrassed, but he thanked me."
Fact-checkers say edited images spread fastest when they are shocking and arrive during real emergencies, when people are anxious and want to warn others. Their advice is simple: pause before you share, look for the original source, and check whether reliable outlets are reporting the same thing.
