People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds | The Verge

See Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook | Science Advances for details; also see The kids are alright. Grandpa’s the problem. | Jeff Jarvis

"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)."

People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds | The Verge