Recently, there have been fake posts and stories being circulated on social media, which are spreading like wildfire, claiming that different football players are secretly paying off large amounts of money to pay off school lunch debts.
This time, it is Liverpool’s Alexis MacAllister whose name has been included in this list of players, as screenshots of articles running the story that the Argentine has paid off massive lunch debts for schools in Merseyside.
As emotional and heartwarming as the gesture may sound, the news of this gesture is fake and is being made with the help of AI.
These posts have been circulated using different football players, like Manchester City‘s Erling Haaland and Manchester United‘s De Ligt, before as well.
Footballers are no strangers to stories of all sorts in their name. However, in this day and age of AI, the names of different footballers have been used to spread this fake news.
The main differentiator in these fabricated stories is that they use the same sentences to make up the stories for different players.
If you look at the Macallister post, it is the same as Haaland and De Ligt. The same sentence has been recurring for all their posts, “messages he left on each receipt brought tears to the students’ eyes”. These have been termed as fake stories with no legitimate source.
While there have been real stories of athletes who have genuinely paid off student lunch debts. Former NFL player Richard Sherman paid off over 27,000 USD in student lunch debt for schools in Santa Clara and Tacoma back in 2019. These types of stories are genuine and provide real inspiration, unlike the fabricated ones appearing online these days.
However, it is important to note that, a new research from Aberlour Children’s Charity has confirmed that school meal debt is an issue for many children and families across schools in England.
The research conducted across three council areas asked schools about the number of pupils and families in debt, the value of debt, school debt recovery practices, support for families and critically if children were still able to eat at school if in debt. Many schools and councils reported that they did not know the level of debt and how many children and families were impacted.
Of those schools who did reply and provided information, showing how many children and their families were in debt, the research found that 23.1% of pupils from these schools, minus those eligible for free school meals, were in debt.
Most schools were supportive of families, but many schools made pupils bring in packed lunches if in debt, which, alongside so-called cashless pre-paid payment systems, raises concerns about the potential for hidden hunger in schools.
A tiny number of schools also reported that they were also prepared to take punitive measures to recover debt, including using debt collection agencies.
Many schools simply did not know about debt and/or did not collect the information, with many stating that it was the responsibility of the third party catering provider to do so, which raises concerns that debt is much more widespread than some schools reported in this research.
The total value of debt, based on figures provided by 47 schools, was £66,000. An average of £1400 per school. If this average was replicated across England the total debt across state schools in England would be £28 million.
Aberlour have made a series of recommendations to the UK Government, including the creation of a fund, just like the one recently introduced in Scotland, that schools can draw upon to underwrite school meal debt.
Social media users need to be careful of any stories which lack credible news sources. As the fake stories use the same narratives for all their news, like in the case of the footballers, they lack the essential element of factual reporting.
However, fans these days are very alert and can make out which are the fake stories and which are the real ones and were quick to comment and point out that the Macallister story just like those of Haaland and De Ligt is not true.
