Test finds Gen Z, millennials more prone to believing fake news
2 Min Read
The test found that participants aged 65 and older performed significantly better, recording a high score of 36% of the time.
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Teenagers in Washington using phones (AFP)
A two-minute quiz partially developed by ChatGPT showed that younger people and heavy internet users are more likely to believe false headlines, while older people and consumers of legacy media were successful in identifying real headlines. This contradicts the common belief that older people are more likely to fall victim to fake news, Forbes reported.
It is worth noting that the test, which was developed by psychologists from the University of Cambridge over the past two years, was utilized by the polling organization YouGov to study 1,516 Americans, assessing how prone they are to believing fabricated headlines.
Researchers used ChatGPT to create 10 fake headlines after selecting 10 genuine headlines taken from sources that were deemed to be largely impartial by an online database, such as Reuters and the Pew Research Center.
The results showed that participants between the ages of 18 and 29 received a high score (16 or more correctly identified headlines) only 11% of the time and a low score (10 or fewer headlines identified correctly) 36% of the time.
On the other hand, participants aged 65 and older performed significantly better, recording a high score of 36% of the time and a low score of 9%, the results found.
In contrast to individuals who use the internet for leisurely purposes for 0–2 hours per day, people who spend nine hours or more online per day only received a high score of 15% of the time.
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