There is evidence that people of all ages struggle to differentiate fake news sites from mainstream news sites and this difficulty has not been shown to increase with age.

Age and Ability to Differentiate Fake News Sites from Mainstream News Sites

Older adults have been found to have greater difficulty differentiating sponsored news stories and advertisements  from unsponsored editorial content.

Age and Ability to Recognize Sponsored Content

The ability to spot changes made to images and differentiate real from fake images has been found to decrease with age.

Age and Ability to Recognize Manipulated Images

Older adults report less willingness to share fake news than younger people. 

Age and Willingness to Share Fake News

Older people appear to be more susceptible to scams and hoaxes online compared to real life. This seems to indicate that digital illiteracy plays an important role in why older adults share more misinformation online.

Real Life VS Online Gullibility of Older People

Older adults tend to be less familiar with online spaces which may make them more susceptible to clickbait and internet hoaxes and make it more difficult for them to recognize manipulated images or sponsored content.

Pepperdine University

- Cognitive declines
- Social changes
- Digital illiteracy

Theories for Why Older Adults Engage with More Fake News

Brashier, N. M., & Schacter, D. L. (2020). Aging in an Era of Fake News. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3), 316–323. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420915872

Aging in an Era of Fake News

Some have suggested that older adults engage with more fake news due to decreased episodic memory and abstract reasoning as well as source memory deficits.
However, older adults also have some strengths that may make them resistant to the illusory truth effect and better at differentiating real and fake news headlines.

The Cognitive Decline Theory for Increased Engagement with Fake News Later in Life

Older adults tend to have greater interpersonal trust and smaller social groups on average. These factors may put them at greater risk to overestimate the trustworthiness of a source.

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