Teenagers and their incomplete knowledge of fake news
- showmethereality
- Jan 6, 2021
- 2 min read
The EU Kids Online 2020 survey found that children and adolescents in Europe have low levels of orientation compared to their mobile and social skills. Only 59% of the surveyed children answered that it is easy for them to decide whether a piece of news is true or not.
Adolescents are key individuals when it comes to discussing false news. Primarily because their news consumption is mainly based on the Internet and within that on social media. They have the best chance of being exposed to fake news. Secondly, they may lack the necessary cognitive skills to identify journalistic biases and surreptitious advertisements. Fake news can have the greatest and most lasting impact on a young audience. Adolescence is a crucial stage in attitude formation, and attitudes developed during this period of life prove to be lasting.
The results also revealed that teens use heuristics to quickly judge the credibility of online and social media news. The focus group discussion has brought to us that special attention is paid to surface cues, especially to appearance-related features. These features consist of things such as unattractive website design, blurred images, and spelling mistakes. They assess the authenticity of an article based on these.
According to a report published by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), high school students are unable to judge the reliability of online information. In a task, the researchers gave a link to the students that took them to a website where an organization disseminated factual reports and in-depth comments about the impact of carbon dioxide on the environment. A basic search on the Internet reveals that the organization managing the website was funded by fossil fuel companies. More than 96 percent of the students did not take these connections into account when answering the question, researchers warned them in vain. Most of the students failed this test.
Researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Education have collected responses from more than 7800 students in their latest research on fake news. The results revealed that most high cannot differentiate native ads from articles. Ads that match the appearance and the shape of the platforms on which they appear are called native ads. This type of ads blends into its environment. Due to its misleading language, it is often confused with sponsored content.
The researchers showed hundreds of high schoolers a homepage that included a traditional ad and also a native ad. However, 80 percent of high school students described sponsored content as real news.
Most of these students accepted photographs in the form they were presented without any form of certification. The researchers showed them a picture titled ‘Fukushima Nuclear Flowers’. The photograph depicted multiple flowers in a so-called “nuclear state”. The image did not have any particular attributes, however, more than three-quarters of the students perceived the image as a fact and believed that the flowers had indeed become abnormal as a result of the nuclear disaster.
Sources:
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