Aging in an Era of Fake News

Abstract

Misinformation causes serious harm, from sowing doubt in modern medicine to inciting violence. Older adults are especially susceptible - they shared the most fake news during the 2016 US election. The most intuitive explanation for this pattern blames cognitive deficits. While older adults forget where they learned information, fluency remains intact and decades of accumulated knowledge helps them evaluate claims. Thus, cognitive declines cannot fully explain older adults' engagement with fake news. Late adulthood also involves social changes, including general trust, difficulty detecting lies, and less emphasis on accuracy when communicating. In addition, older adults are relative newcomers to social media, who may struggle to spot sponsored content or manipulated images. In a post-truth world, interventions should consider older adults' shifting social goals and gaps in their digital literacy.

Keywords: aging; fake news; misinformation; truth.

Figure 1.

Twitter users over 65 saw the most political fake news in their feeds during the 2016 election. Adapted from Grinberg, Joseph, Friedland, Swire-Thompson, & Lazer (2019).

Figure 2.

Facebook users over 65 shared the most links to fake news sites during the 2016 election. Adapted from Guess, Nagler, and Tucker (2019).

Figure 3.

When falsehoods contradict older adults’ knowledge, repetition does not mislead them. Adapted from Brashier, Umanath, Cabeza, and Marsh (2017).

Figure 4.

Older adults remember details inferred from a source’s character as well as young adults do. Adapted from Rahhal, May, and Hasher (2002).

Figure 5.

Christian Times Newspaper altered a photograph of a man unloading ballot boxes. The outlet removed some of the “ballot box” labels and reversed the image (presumably to make the original picture harder to find).