Across Europe, the spread of misinformation and disinformation continues to pose serious risks to democracy, social cohesion, and trust in institutions. Finland, often described as Europe’s most resilient nation to fake news, offering a strong national example of how education can be used to counter these threats. Since the 1970s, Finnish schools have embedded media literacy into everyday teaching, and since 2014, this has expanded to cover the digital environment and social media. The Finnish curriculum now focuses on “multiliteracy,” teaching children to analyse and evaluate all forms of information—from statistics in mathematics to propaganda in history or manipulated images in art. This holistic model treats resilience as a matter of civic defence, with everyone, from young pupils to politicians, responsible for recognising and countering disinformation.

Like Finland, DRONE recognises that digital resilience must start early. DRONEs unique three-pronged ecosystem approach to address the challenges of digital literacy education in Disinformation Ecosystem, Human Development Ecosystem and Whole-School Ecosystem dovetail well with the Finnish approach. The EU-funded mydroneproject.eu (DRONE) builds on and supports these efforts, scaling Finland’s lessons to a European context to develop training for school leaders, teachers, and parents to promote digital literacy and combat the spread of disinformation among vulnerable groups of adolescents.

The DRONE project will provide schools with practical tools, modular training, and handbooks to help students develop critical-thinking and problem solving skills to question the reliability of sources, and understand the motives behind information they encounter online. By creating innovative training for teachers, school leaders and parents DRONE will enable classrooms across Europe to replicate the kinds of detective-style activities seen in Finnish schools—where vulnerable groups of adolescents learn to distinguish between misinformation (mistakes), disinformation (deliberate lies).

A key feature of Finland’s strategy is that it cuts across all subjects, rather than being confined to a single “media literacy” class. DRONE mirrors this approach by encouraging teachers to embed digital literacy in all areas of the curriculum. For example, students might explore how algorithms influence what they see on social media in a maths or computing class or examine how language can be manipulated in literature and foreign-language lessons. By spreading this mindset across disciplines, both Finland and DRONE aim to make critical questioning a lifelong habit rather than a one-off skill.

Finland also stresses that defending against disinformation is a whole-of-society task. Alongside schools, NGOs such as Faktabaari and Mediametka provide fact-checking services, literacy kits, and innovative educational tools. Similarly, DRONE does not restrict its impact to classrooms alone. Its training modules and resources target not only students, but also teachers, parents, guardians, and policymakers. This mirrors Finland’s idea of information resilience as “civil defence”—a collective responsibility where everyone contributes to protecting democratic values. By involving families and communities, DRONE ensures that the lessons learned in school are reinforced at home and in wider society.

Recent articles on Finland and other countries highlight new challenges brought by artificial intelligence, such as deepfakes and algorithm-driven disinformation. Finnish educators are experimenting with ways to teach AI literacy, from using AI to co-create children’s stories to warning students about manipulated images and videos. DRONE directly supports this forward-looking agenda. By training teachers to integrate discussions about AI, online platforms, and digital manipulation into their lessons, the project helps prepare young people to face the next generation of disinformation threats. It complements Finland’s national guidelines by offering scalable, adaptable frameworks that can be applied in many European school systems.

Ultimately, both Finland’s strategy and the EU’s DRONE project share the same long-term goal: to create active, responsible citizens who can evaluate, verify, and challenge the information they encounter. Education is recognised as the most sustainable defence against disinformation. Governments may regulate platforms, and civil society may fact-check rumours, but only a critically literate public can ensure lasting resilience.

By building on Finland’s success and extending it across borders, mydroneproject.eu plays a vital role in strengthening Europe’s democratic foundations. It helps schools deliver the kind of multiliteracy that Finland has pioneered, equips teachers with the tools to guide their students through an increasingly complex media landscape, and involves the wider community in safeguarding trust and truth. Together, these efforts show how national innovation and EU cooperation can combine to tackle one of the most urgent challenges of the digital age.