- Cognitive declines
- Social changes
- Digital illiteracy

Theories for Why Older Adults Engage with More Fake News

Older adults tend to see more information from fake news sites in their Twitter feed than younger adults do.

Age and Fake News Exposure on Twitter

Advanced age greatly predicts a higher likelihood to engage with fake news. Older adults tend to be exposed to more fake news sites and share more inaccurate information on social media.

Pepperdine University

Republicans and Independents were more likely to share news than Democrats. Age correlated positively with fake news dissemination and the correlation remained significant after controlling for ideology and political orientation, education and total number of web links. Sex, race, education, income, political knowledge and total number of web links weren’t reliable predictors.

Predictors of fake news dissemination (results by Guess et al., 2019)

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

Does the direction of correlation between fake news acceptance/dissemination and age depend on the content of misinformation?

Age and fake news acceptance/dissemination

Research on the online activities and digital media literacy of older generations as well as on the impact of their memory impairment on their ability to recognize fake news as such. Measurements of digital media literacy. Interventions to increase digital media literacy. Research on the impact of trust in social networks on one's fake news acceptance.

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