Gohari | Gen Z is more susceptible to fake news than you think

Oh, no — old man Steve is posting QAnon conspiracies on Facebook again! A child-eating cabal running the government? A pizza shop that hides a pedophile ring? How can anyone believe this garbage, I wonder, as I scroll through yet another Instagram reel explaining how Kamala Harris is a cop now. Hey, wait, did I just see a video of Hunter Biden admitting he committed crimes with his laptop? Alright, I know this can’t be real, but the videos make it all seem like it is. 

While we may believe that only older people are susceptible to misinformation, conspiracies and general internet scams, it’s youth that are targeted the most. We may have grown up on the internet, but we aren’t immune to its mind-warping effects, especially because we’re inundated by misinformation every time we open social media on our phones.

In fact, according to a misinformation susceptibility survey done by YouGov, young people might actually be worse at identifying misinformation than their older counterparts. Although two-thirds of all people surveyed were able to correctly identify the majority of false headlines, young adults performed worse than their older counterparts on average, correctly identifying 12 out of 20 headlines compared to older adults who typically identified 15 out of 20.

This may come as a shock, given that teens and young adults normally spend more time on the Internet than older adults. Conventional wisdom would have you believe this makes young people better equipped to see misinformation for what it is. However, that may just be where the problem lies. Because we spend so much more time online — with much of our news consumption coming from social media and streaming platforms — we’re uniquely susceptible to misinformation. We might not believe the first or second instances of misinformation, but when we’re absolutely overwhelmed by falsehoods, we’re bound to get fooled at some point.

The misinformation fed to us may be fake, but it impacts our voting patterns in very real ways. Americans are increasingly losing faith in our democratic system, refusing to vote over concerns that their voice does not matter. Foreign agents have noticed, too, purposely disseminating misinformation via social media to promote mistrust in our government and our broader civic lives. The overall result is an erosion of our very democratic way of life. 

Meanwhile, some members of the Republican Party, including former President Donald Trump himself, continue to push the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen and that this one is at risk of the same problem. Known as “the big lie,” this particular form of misinformation is not just untrue — it’s dangerous. According to the Brookings Institute, the big lie suppresses voters and promotes a threatening environment. The Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol and threats against poll workers, for example, are tied to this lie.

With election-related misinformation becoming more dangerous than ever, we must be more vigilant in identifying the attempts at misleading us. In high school, I worked for the Teen Fact-Checking Network, a nonprofit sponsored by the Poynter Institute and PBS that worked to combat misinformation targeted toward teens. Through that, I learned some important lessons on how to tell when we’re being targeted.

The first step is to see where the information is coming from. Just because something’s heavily circulated doesn’t mean it’s accurate, so a good way to check is by clicking on the original poster. A blue checkmark on Instagram means that the account is verified — so a legitimate news source generally falls under this category. However, a check on X, formerly Twitter, no longer means that the source is trustworthy since anyone can buy verification. Still, use your best judgment by reading the biography to determine if what you’re seeing is legitimate or not.

Another easy way to ensure you’re encountering something accurate is by checking the comments or community notes. There’s strength in numbers, and some commenters might even cite their sources when they’re fact-checking. Following those sources and doing your own research can help you determine whether the initial information is factual. 

We are not alone in this. The State Department has done extensive research on foreign interference in our elections and released guidelines to avoid disinformation perpetuated by these sources. We may not be as immune to political misinformation as we initially thought, but by thinking critically and trusting in reliable sources, we’ll be in a stronger position to navigate discourse online amidst the pervasive attempts at misleading us.

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