OCTOBER 9, 2025: Headline writers had a ball on on Thursday when Pope Leo XIV gave news agencies a pointed master class on morality and clickbait.

“Pope Leo echoed the call for “courageous entrepreneurs, courageous information engineers”, to prevent the degradation of communication through clickbait, disinformation, and unfair competition. Media agencies, he noted, are on the frontlines and must find ways to balance economic sustainability with a commitment to accurate, balanced reporting.”

-Merlo, Francesca, ‘Pope: In this age of communication, nobody can say ‘I did not know’, Vatican News, October 9, 2025.

The Rise of Clickbait: This Moment in Media History

Why do we have clickbait? It’s important to understand how it differs from headlines, and the role that the internet–and Obama’s first presidential victory in 2008–played in its origins. I happen to be reading Dan Pfeiffer’s memoir about his time on the Obama campaign and how Trump worked the quickly evolving internet ecosystem, when I saw this today on why he didn’t like press conferences (go with me here):

“First, you give up control [in a press conference]. The reporters set the agenda based on the questions they want to ask–Obama wants to talk about his jobs proposal, the media may want to ask him about a legitimate policy area that we don’t want to be the message of the day, but too often they devolve intro trivia designed to get traffic for click-thirsty media outlets.” [emphasis mine]

-Pfeiffer, Dan; Yes We (Still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump (p68).

What makes you click

” ‘The real meaning of clickbait,’ Writer/Producer Teresa Jusino told us from Los Angeles on our Media History podcast, ‘is you click on: ‘Oh, you won’t believe body blah,’ and then it’s misleading you in another direction and has nothing to do with what the headline is.’ “

There is a certain element of: ‘We want to leave the big part out of the headline to make you want to find out what it is.’

So recently I did an article about age gaps in between Bridgerton’s actors and their characters. And the headline that we went with was:

Bridgerton has an age gap problem, but not the way you think.

And so we wonder, ‘Oh, what’s the way you think?’ “

“I treat all headlines as yellow flags”

In our very first episode of Out Think Media History, Writer Emily Popek gave parents this advice for determining a headline’s intent and meaning:

(EP): “This sounds alarmist, but I treat all headlines as yellow flags. Literally any headline that I see flash in front of me, my next thought is, let me see if I want to know more about it.

My next thought is: let me see what’s really going on there.

Even well-written news headlines can be misleading. It’s always worth taking five minutes at the minimum to squint closely and see if there’s really anything there. There might be smoke, but is there fire?

Stay cautious with clickbait. I saw a headline about the New York Yankees the other day that made me go, “What?” and I clicked on the link, but the information in the headline was two sentences.

Do your own research. I found a couple more mentions of the Yankees headline, but both were short. That headline made it seem like something really big had happened. This is just one comment someone made. Nothing has really happened.

Make it past the headline before you form your opinion. Make it past the headline and engage your thinking brain with the material being presented to you.”

Model caution and curiosity for your children

When our children watch us process and interpret a headline, it helps set that pattern in their developing brains. Invite them to research beyond the article or video and learn how to fact check a few times, and they could catch on to the habit.

One element of our interactive workshop Taming of the Screens is to evaluate and rewrite headlines in Romeo & Juliet based on context and critical thinking. If you’d like to see a sample of the in-person or virtual experience, email the age ranges to editor@outthinkmedia.com.

Read more: Sextortion & Kids w/ Jen Lawrence (Out Think Influencers ep2)

Photo/Image Credit: Canva

Read our Fair Use Disclaimer