Many Americans seem to worry that their parents or grandparents will fall for fake news online. But as it turns out, we may be collectively concerned about the wrong generation.
Contrary to popular belief, Gen Zers and millennials could be more susceptible to online misinformation than older adults, according to a poll published online on June 29 by the research agency YouGov. What’s more, people who spend more time online had more difficulty distinguishing between real and fake news headlines. “We saw some results that are different from the ad hoc kinds of tests that [previous] researchers have done,” says Rakoen Maertens, a research psychologist at the University of Cambridge and lead author of a study on the development of the test used in the poll, which was published on June 29 in Behavior Research Methods.
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