A digital media literacy intervention for older adults improves resilience to fake news

Abstract

Older adults are especially susceptible to fake news online, possibly because they are less digitally literate compared to younger individuals. Interventions for older adults have emerged to improve digital literacy, although there has been little evaluation of their effectiveness in improving older adults' resilience to fake news. We report the results of a digital literacy intervention for older adults administered during the 2020 U.S. election. The intervention was a 1-hour, self-directed series of interactive modules designed to teach concepts and skills for identifying misinformation online. Consistent with our pre-registered hypothesis, older adults (M_age = 67) in the treatment condition (N = 143) significantly improved their likelihood of accurately discerning fake from true news from 64% pre-intervention to 85% post-intervention. In contrast, older adults in the control condition (N = 238) did not significantly improve (from 55% to 57%). The treated older adults were also more likely to employ strategies for identifying misinformation online compared to pre-intervention and the control group.

Figure 1

Predicted probabilities of correctly judging news headline veracity. Note: Predicted probability of accurately judging the veracity of news headlines broken down by all news headlines, among only true news headlines, and among only false news headlines (from models in Table S2). Higher values indicate greater probability of correctly judging the veracity of a given headline. Blue points represent the control group and red points represent the Intervention group (i.e., those who took MediaWise for Seniors). Bars are 95% confidence intervals. This figure was made using Stata.

Figure 2

Predicted values of skill levels and probability of researching headlines. Note: Panel (A): Predicted values of skill level on six digital literacy skills taught in MediaWise for Seniors important for identifying online misinformation (Table S4). Individuals rated their own skill level on each skill from 1 to 5 where a rating of 1 represents no understanding of that skill and a rating of 5 represents full understanding. Higher values indicate greater probability of correctly judging the veracity of a given headline. Blue points represent the control group and red points represent the intervention group (i.e., those who took MediaWise for Seniors). Bars are 95% confidence intervals. Panel (B): Predicted probability of reporting doing research on a headline to inform one’s judgment of its veracity (Table S4). Higher values indicate greater probability of correctly doing research on a headline. Bars are 95% confidence intervals. This figure was made using Stata.