How Gen Z Became the Most Gullible Generation

The video starts with bold red letters blaring: “2016 Democrat Primary Voter Fraud CAUGHT ON TAPE.” A series of blurry security footage follows, showing blatant instances of ballot stuffing. The only problem: The clips actually depict voter fraud in Russia.

Would you have taken the bait?

A quick Google search would have easily revealed the dubious source of the video, along with news articles debunking its claims. But when researchers from Stanford studying young people’s media literacy — the ability to accurately evaluate information in the wilds of mass media — showed the video to 3,446 high school students, only three succeeded in identifying the Russian connection.

“There is this myth of the digital native, that because some people have grown up with digital devices, they are well equipped to make sense of the information that those devices provide,” says Joel Breakstone, who led the 2021 study. “The results were sobering.”

It’s a startling reality about Gen Z, backed up by multiple studies and what we can all see for ourselves: The most online generation is also the worst at discerning fact from fiction on the internet.

That becomes an issue when the internet — and specifically, social media — has become the main source of news for the younger generation. About three in five Gen Zers, from between the ages of 13 and 26, say they get their news from social media at least once a week. TikTok is a particularly popular platform: 45 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 said they were regular news consumers on the app.

While social media may make news more accessible, there’s also little quality control to the information on the platforms. And although people of all ages are bad at detecting misinformation — which is only getting harder amid the rise of AI — members of Gen Z are particularly vulnerable to being fooled. Why? There’s a dangerous feedback loop at play. Many young people are growing deeply skeptical of institutions and more inclined toward conspiracy theories, which makes them shun mainstream news outlets and immerse themselves in narrow online communities — which then feeds them fabrications based on powerful algorithms and further deepens their distrust. It’s the kind of media consumption that differs drastically from older generations who spend far more time with mainstream media, and the consequences can be grim.

I’ve seen it happen in my own social circles, where friends in their 20s will start to regurgitate what they see on TikTok as if it is fact. My friends and I often now make it a point to ask if the “source” someone has gotten their information from is a TikTok video, and whether they’ve at least looked it up on Google afterward. The answer is usually no.

The misinformation people see on TikTok and other social media ranges from nefarious to absurd: Famously, there was a period when some young people on the app seriously questioned the life story of Helen Keller, who found success despite being deaf and blind (“Did she get any kind of money for lying her way through life??” one user asks). Just last year, when Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton hit North Carolina and Florida, claims the government was “geo-engineering” the weather gained traction on social media, as people suggested that Democrats were behind the ravaging of Republican-dense areas. Beef tallow as skincare is the latest trend. If a group of teens next to you smells like fryer grease, they might have fallen victim to videos that claim beef fat is good for your face, despite warnings from dermatologists.

The common thread in all these viral conspiracy theories on TikTok is that they are fueled by distrust of institutions — from schools to the National Weather Service to the medical establishment. And that sentiment carries over to the media: Only 16 percent of Gen Zers have strong confidence in the news. It’s no surprise then that so many young people are shunning traditional publications and seeking their news on social media, often from unverified accounts that do little fact-checking.

The ramifications are potentially huge for American politics. Without some sort of course correction, a growing piece of the electorate will find itself falling victim to fake news and fringe conspiracy theories online — likely driving the hyper-polarization of our politics to new heights.

When it comes to fact-checking, Gen Z tends to have its own distinct method: Opening up the comment section.

“They tend to feel comfortable relying on aggregate trust, so they’ll rely on Yelp reviews or Amazon reviews,” says Daniel Cox, a pollster who surveys young people. “This sounds like a very similar thing, right? They’re seeing what other people are saying about an article or a product and basing their decisions on that.”

In the era of the almighty algorithm, however, the comment sections are often echo chambers. There are few countervailing notions there because the algorithm feeds the video to like-minded people who share the same perspective on the subject, regardless of its accuracy.

“[The algorithm] helps segregate people in ways that are profoundly concerning to me,” Cox adds. “We’re not sharing the same experiences online — we’re having very discrete, different experiences by our gender or sexual orientation or politics. … Everything that you’re experiencing, you can find some kind of validation online for it.”

And this is a bipartisan trend: Trump’s fans and haters are both just as likely to fall for fake information that already conforms to their worldview.

A prime example of this dynamic is a fake viral soundbite of President Donald Trump allegedly musing that the District of Columbia should be renamed the District of America. The audio has been debunked as AI-generated, but you wouldn’t know that when looking at the comment section of videos reacting in disbelief. In one video that’s gained over 250,000 likes, the comments don’t question the source of the audio clip but rather share the same horror. “Why do we have the dumbest president in American History??” reads the top comment. One must scroll far down the comment section to even spot a clarification from the video’s creator, who commented a day later: “I’m thinking it is AI.”

These echo chambers help explain Gen Z’s growing affinity for conspiracy theories. We’ve moved beyond the stereotype of the loner in the basement with the tin-foil hat; today it’s the TikTok addict enclosed in their political cocoon who is particularly vulnerable to misinformation.

Young people aren’t solely to blame for their lack of digital literacy.

In school, students are taught to read closely and carefully — which misinformation researchers say has unintentionally enforced the idea that students should drill into a single video and determine its accuracy with their eyes, rather than leave the page and open Google. The technology of misinformation is advancing rapidly, and it is becoming impossible to differentiate what’s true from what’s false with mere observation. For older generations, who came to the internet later in life, there’s still at least some natural skepticism toward what they see online. For the youth, it must be taught.

Gen Zers are uniquely vulnerable to misinformation compared to older age groups not just because of their social media habits, says Rakoen Maertens, a behavioral scientist at the University of Oxford, but because they have fewer lived experiences and knowledge to discern reality.

Maertens, who helped create a test that measures a person’s likelihood of being duped by fake headlines, says that while Gen Zers were most likely to fall for fake news now, there is hope that as time passes, they’ll become better at detecting falsities, just like the generations before them.

There’s also another, far more depressing alternative that may be just as likely — that the rest of the population will go the way of Gen Z.

After all, as the internet becomes ever more ingrained in people’s lives and more platforms adopt silo-fueling algorithms, even older generations that had held onto their skepticism may embrace the media consumption habits of the youth — and become just as susceptible to AI-fueled conspiracy theories and misinformation.

“It is a systematic issue,” Breakstone says. “The evidence is clear that folks of all ages struggle to make sense of the overwhelming amount of information that they encounter online, and we need to figure out ways to support people, to find better ways to make sense of the content that streams across their devices.”