Teens much more likely to believe online conspiracy claims than adults – US study

Teenagers are significantly more likely to believe online conspiracy theories than older generations, a new study has shown, underscoring the broad impacts of gen Z’s relationship with social media.

Findings from Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit that fights misinformation, showed that 60% of 13-17-year-old Americans surveyed agreed with four or more harmful conspiracy statements – compared with just 49% of adults. For teens who spend four or more hours a day on any single social media platform, the figure was as high as 69%.

“There’s a prejudice towards believing that youth will save us from the ills created by the former generations, but when it comes to misinformation, there are no future generations to save us from the damage that we’ve caused,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH.

“This should be a clarion call – very simply, if these young people hold these beliefs in future years of their life, our democracy and the values that underpin it are under an almost impossible strain,” he added.

The study polled more than 1,000 adults and 1,000 teenagers aged 13-17 about their ideas on social media and its impact. It also asked respondents to state whether they agreed with damaging statements from several categories of misinformation, including anti-vaccine statements, antisemitism and Covid-19 misinformation.

The report is just the latest to call attention to the damages of social media affecting young people. There has been a growing understanding of the negative mental health implications of social media. But Ahmed said the CCDH study has made clear that social media’s impact goes beyond individual mental health and creates public health issues for society at large in the forms of misinformation and hate speech.

It comes as younger generations are increasingly relying on social media for news and online search. Recent data from Google found that 40% of Gen Z now prefers platforms like TikTok and Instagram to traditional search engines. A 2022 study found 50% of Gen Z respondents used social media to access news on a daily basis, and only 5% read newspapers.

These trends are being exacerbated by the rise of AI-powered chatbots and search engines like ChatGPT, raising new concerns, said Ioana Literat, an associate professor of communication studying social media at Teachers College, Columbia University.

“We’re just starting to see the beginnings of the intersection AI and fake news, and conspiracy theories on social media will play a really big role in that,” she said. “With the rise of AI, and how easy it is to create manipulated media using generative AI, I really worry that the statistics will increase.”

Experts are particularly concerned the proliferation of generative AI has the potential to exponentially increase the scale of misinformation and flood the information ecosystem with harmful content.

Ironically, the younger generation is also more aware of the dangers online media presents, with 83% of 13 to 17-year-olds agreeing that online harms have offline consequences compared with just 68% of adults. The question, as the report poses, is how to remedy the issue.

The report introduces a framework created by the CCDH for a path to remedy these growing risks, which the organization developed following a global summit on online harms in 2022 that included lawmakers from the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Called the “Star” framework for legislative reform, it focuses on four fundamental principles: Safety by Design, Transparency, Accountability, and Responsibility.

The survey found 42% of respondents supported the framework, with more that 70% agreeing with certain components of it, including that products should be transparent and safe by design.

“It’s really clear that the American public understand that online harms have offline impact, and that the social media companies are in part responsible because of the way their algorithms work to amplify hate and disinformation,” Ahmed said. “This report puts the ball back in the court of legislators and says, ‘What are you going to do?’ because the people want change, and it’s clear they know why we need it.”