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George Orwell's political fable Animal Farm is 80 years old, but its message on the power of language to manipulate reality is striking a fresh chord with students learning digital literacy in the age of AI. A staple for high school English students for decades, the text has been adopted as a starting point for a nationwide schools competition called "Win the Farm". The game was launched this week at Ballina Coast High in northern New South Wales to coincide with Media Literacy Week. In the book, farm animals led by revolutionary young pigs Snowball and Napoleon revolt and overthrow the drunken and irresponsible farmer Jones, establishing a utopian society, which is ultimately corrupted by greed and inequality. "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - Animal Farm by George Orwell The game is being presented to schools by Day of AI Australia, a philanthropic organisation that works to boost young people's knowledge around AI. Classroom coordinator Jessica Xu said Animal Farm exposed students to a simple political dichotomy. "It's a good way for us to keep it all relatable, keep it more easy to digest," Ms Xu said. "It's not so much a political statement on what we think of the current state of the world." State of play Ms Xu said the aim of the game was for students to create social media bots and test how different settings affected how influential they were able to be online. Students can direct their bot to be humorous or to only speak the truth, for example. It is not just a hypothetical exercise. According to Day of AI, 17 per cent of social media activity during the 2025 Australian Federal election campaign was generated by bots trying to push a political agenda. "So we are trying get the students to think about: how do bots actually impact the social media world? How does it impact what you see in political environments and also non-political environments?" she said. Truth matters Year 12 student Chloe-Jo Dodgson said knowing what was true was as important as ever. "I think it absolutely matters because there is truth that needs to be told and if it's all fake, how do you know the truth?" she said. Year eight student Koby Ross said he used AI quite a bit at home and was pretty confident he could tell what had been generated by AI. Even so, he said he was worried about it being misused. "AI is always going to be around, but we don't want to use it too often because it can lead to problems," he said. Brave new world UNICEF Australia's head of Digital Policy John Livingstone said its data showed teens were mostly using AI to assist them with homework, but a quarter thought this meant they were cheating. "They are adopting AI quickly, they are putting it to use in their lives for school work and other means, but there isn't that guidance in place that's giving young people a clear message that this is a safe and responsible way to use AI in your life." Ballina Coast High Principal Peter Howes said rather than shy away, educators needed to lean in to teaching students about AI and how to control it. "It is a change, but when hasn't there been a change in education?" he said. "What we are very keen to do is to make sure our young people are empowered to use AI as a tool and that it is not controlling them but they have the skill set behind them to use that tool to their advantage." "One thing that AI will never do is build the capacity to be really, truly great humans — things like empathy, grit, collaboration, kindness."
