People Older Than 65 Share the Most Fake News, Study Finds

[DamianTV]

https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/0...ws-study-finds

Older Americans are disproportionately more likely to share fake news on Facebook, according to a new analysis by researchers at New York and Princeton Universities. Older users shared more fake news than younger ones regardless of education, sex, race, income, or how many links they shared. In fact, age predicted their behavior better than any other characteristic -- including party affiliation. Today's study, published in Science Advances, examined user behavior in the months before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In early 2016, the academics started working with research firm YouGov to assemble a panel of 3,500 people, which included both Facebook users and non-users. On November 16th, just after the election, they asked Facebook users on the panel to install an application that allowed them to share data including public profile fields, religious and political views, posts to their own timelines, and the pages that they followed. Users could opt in or out of sharing individual categories of data, and researchers did not have access to the News Feeds or data about their friends.

About 49 percent of study participants who used Facebook agreed to share their profile data. Researchers then checked links posted to their timelines against a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman. Later, they checked the links against four other lists of fake news stories and domains to see whether the results would be consistent. Across all age categories, sharing fake news was a relatively rare category. Only 8.5 percent of users in the study shared at least one link from a fake news site. Users who identified as conservative were more likely than users who identified as liberal to share fake news: 18 percent of Republicans shared links to fake news sites, compared to less than 4 percent of Democrats. The researchers attributed this finding largely to studies showing that in 2016, fake news overwhelmingly served to promote Trump's candidacy. But older users skewed the findings: 11 percent of users older than 65 shared a hoax, while just 3 percent of users 18 to 29 did. Facebook users ages 65 and older shared more than twice as many fake news articles than the next-oldest age group of 45 to 65, and nearly seven times as many fake news articles as the youngest age group (18 to 29).

As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts. They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes.

Older Americans also watch MSM which is where most of the FAKE NEWS comes from.

[Schifference]

Is it possible that older people tend to be conservative and the ultimate goal is to discredit conservatives?

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

...a list of web domains that have historically shared fake news, as compiled by BuzzFeed reporter Craig Silverman.

It's ironic that this guy and Buzzfeed came in dead last on a media trust list. Even last among libs:

[TheTexan]

It's ironic that this guy and Buzzfeed came in dead last on a media trust list. Even last among libs:

Liberals are apparently very trusting.

[Suzanimal]

It's ironic that this guy and Buzzfeed came in dead last on a media trust list. Even last among libs:

No one trusts Buzzfeed quizes, lol.

[Stratovarious]

''As for why, researchers believe older people lack the digital literacy skills of their younger counterparts. They also say that people experience cognitive decline as they age, making them likelier to fall for hoaxes. ''

Slashdot.org has not bent in this story....(sarc) , we know
that CNN et all are the platform for the most 'fake' news, obviously 'slash' is not referring to them, while
the fact is CNN / MMM are in fact worse than an 'theory' , they are Collusional' conspirators themselves,
not just fake news, but Conspirators.
- As for the 'lack of digital literacy' what a complete load of bs, the fact that these retarded , senile, old
fools are getting this so called fake news indicates that they do in fact have digital acumen , otherwise
the only available sources would be CNN NBC ABC FOX .....
Right , 'slash' is just bringing us an honest, unbiased story.......lmao

[DamianTV]

I dont know. Plenty of old people I know lean against freedom and liberty, because they know they have been completely trapped by the system, and are now aware of how hopelessly dependent they are on that same destructive system. Why do these same victims flat out insist that I join them? They know damn well that if I dont, there goes their Social Security money. I make no reservations about Social Security still being there by the time I reach their age. I know Im $#@!ed, so do the Millennials, and we wonder why so many of them have "bad attitudes" and flat out refuse to work for McJobs Fast Food rip off minimum wage slave labor no benefit no retirement $#@! holes, yet, those are the only jobs available to them. I almost feel bad for the ones that got duped to going to college to get absolutely worthless degrees and six figures in the hole to qualify them for jack and $#@! even knowing damn good and well Jack has already left town. Almost.

Trouble still remains. MSM lies. Yet, Public Education teaches blind habits of reaction to authority and to NOT think. Same exact thing as MSM does. Hmmm... This pattern of "do not think" leaves EVERYONE vulnerable to those that DO think. Those that think, like those at the TOP, tend to think about one thing, and one thing alone, how to $#@! up everyone elses lives and come out smelling like roses.

[Stratovarious]

I dont know. Plenty of old people I know lean against freedom and liberty, because they know they have been completely trapped by the system, and are now aware of how hopelessly dependent they are on that same destructive system. Why do these same victims flat out insist that I join them? They know damn well that if I dont, there goes their Social Security money. I make no reservations about Social Security still being there by the time I reach their age. I know Im $#@!ed, so do the Millennials, and we wonder why so many of them have "bad attitudes" and flat out refuse to work for McJobs Fast Food rip off minimum wage slave labor no benefit no retirement $#@! holes, yet, those are the only jobs available to them. I almost feel bad for the ones that got duped to going to college to get absolutely worthless degrees and six figures in the hole to qualify them for jack and $#@! even knowing damn good and well Jack has already left town. Almost.

Trouble still remains. MSM lies. Yet, Public Education teaches blind habits of reaction to authority and to NOT think. Same exact thing as MSM does. Hmmm... This pattern of "do not think" leaves EVERYONE vulnerable to those that DO think. Those that think, like those at the TOP, tend to think about one thing, and one thing alone, how to $#@! up everyone elses lives and come out smelling like roses.

Ben Shapiro is one of the most vocal chicken littles regarding
Social Security , for his rediculous;
'pyramid scheme' rhetoric to be true, Humans will be extinct in
America by 2040 + -, which is absolutely preposterous.
Social Security is missmanaged that is true, something that is fixable
but idiots like Shapiro unwittingly rely on the extinction model
(which would also mean we stopped breading 15 years ago)
as a foundation, his premise is a false paradigm.
Your social security will be there unless voters / Congress
decide to can the program, or Nuclear war actually does bring an
end to our population.

[Superfluous Man]

Is it possible that older people tend to be conservative and the ultimate goal is to discredit conservatives?

Possibly. But it's also true. When I had FB, I saw it all the time. I was shocked at how often someone posted something from The Onion only to have older people commenting on it as if it were a real news story.

[euphemia]

Your statement is true, DamianTV. Husband and I are moving toward retirement years, and it is very hard not to think in terms of the status quo. I have lost a good deal of mobility this year, and you would not believe what that blue tag in my car window does in my mind. I don’t just look for convenient parking, I want the very first space. I smile as I write this because I have never been this way before. I’m exceedingly patient and generous, and it frightens me how quickly I go the other way these days.

[euphemia]

However, the idea that older people believe fake news because we are losing cognitive ability is a bunch of hogwash. Go to any college campus and wade through those enclaves of ignorance. Comedians do it all the time. The average student can’t tell you the name of the VP. With all the resources at their disposal, the lazy think fomented in schools is way worse than some lonely old man sharing a story on FB.

Ps: I thought FB was going to stop being a viaduct for fake news?

[oyarde]

Older people are no different than younger people . They believe what they like . They do not seek the truth . They rely on others to tell them .

[oyarde]

In General .older people want to preserve what they have .Younger people want someone to give them what they do not have . So really older people may lean towards some socialism type safety nets where young people tend to be easily convinced communism is the way to go. Not too uplifting . The greatest thing you can do is help break the harmful chain with a few individuals .

[angelatc]

Is it possible that older people tend to be conservative and the ultimate goal is to discredit conservatives?

Can it be both? My parents are conservative and they sent me every Obama Muslim birther trope they could find.

If the ultimate goal is to discredit conservatives then conservatives shouldn't make it so easy.

[DamianTV]

Ben Shapiro is one of the most vocal chicken littles regarding
Social Security , for his rediculous;
'pyramid scheme' rhetoric to be true, Humans will be extinct in
America by 2040 + -, which is absolutely preposterous.
Social Security is missmanaged that is true, something that is fixable
but idiots like Shapiro unwittingly rely on the extinction model
(which would also mean we stopped breading 15 years ago)
as a foundation, his premise is a false paradigm.
Your social security will be there unless voters / Congress
decide to can the program, or Nuclear war actually does bring an
end to our population.

... or we go the way of Venezuela, or the country collapses like USSR, or the Cloward Piven Strategy overwhelms our welfare support system, or a person collects $1000 a month in SSI yet cost of living skyrockets to $5000 a month...

There are a LOT of ways the system can collapse. All are very real and very dangerous.

Belief, Money, Violence

We have a Fiat Currency. EVERY nation that has tried a Fiat Currency has collapsed. In order for that Money to have value, people must Believe it has value, because it is backed by nothing else. The more people that recognize the falsehood of Fiat Currency being a long term storage for value, the more people they explain it to, which only accelerates the demise of the US Fiat Dollar.

It may not necessarily be a Dollar Collapse that kills our currency, as other factors can overwhelm our system also. California and NY both want Free Health Care, for all Illegal Immigrants. That just draws more Illegals in, which overloads the system even more. Sovereign Citizens and US citizens are gonna all be damned and expected to pick up the tab for the Illegals, which only drives the cost of our health care up even further, and removes even more incentives to participate in a system already dying under its own weight; weight created by Greed, where competition is prohibited by law, favoritism is given to the lawless at both the top and the bottom at the expense of the Law Abiding Citizens, and you see drugs that cost $40 for a prescription in Canada cost $40,000 here.

What could possibly go wrong?